The parking lot is unplowed, and there’s enough snow to require a little bit of gas to point the car into a space; I don’t hear it dragging on the bottom of the car, though, so it must be less than eight inches.
The groomer’s made one pass through today already – it’s idling at the closest point on the trail to the restrooms – so I’m going with skate skis. As I unload, another skier clicks into her bindings at the car and skis across the parking lot out to the trail. For me, old habits of babying ski equipment die hard, so even though my gear is mostly – literally – from last century, I walk the snowed in parking lot to the trailhead.
As thanks for protecting my ski bases, I get to spend a few minutes unclogging the bottoms of my boots so they will mate with the bindings. The snow is dense and sticky; further north, by felling trees across the road, it’s closed the other major wintertime highway across the Cascades. No such problems getting here today – just a little lingering snow shower tucked into the crook of Airplane Curve, right at the pass.
I set out southbound, and all the little ski muscles that have gone unused since last winter make their presence known – shins, hip flexors, the front third of my shoulders. My elbows complain too, as every once in a while, balled up snow in the baskets makes my poles slip instead of bite in – that sticky snow again.
As I pick my way through the early risers on the trail – by my definition, they’re early risers if they’re on the trail before me – the kilometers start to roll away. Despite the interstate highway on the other side of the lake, there’s even a few moments of hushed silence; these come courtesy of rock cuts blasted out decades ago, in the name of saving Milwaukee Road trains a few feet of elevation change. Today, mostly, they just solidify the “big green circle” difficulty rating of this trail.
By the time I get to Roaring Creek, there’s only two skiers ahead of me, judging by the v-shaped tracks on the otherwise pristine trail. I catch up with them at the dam at the end of the lake. Like me, they’ve chosen skate skis and brought daypacks, reflecting the not-quite-frontcountry, not-quite-backcountry nature of this trail. We nod our hellos, and they continue southbound; I’m turning around here. In a few moments, the groomer comes through again, and I’m left with a blank canvas of corduroy stretching ten kilometers back to the car.
Shortform 