2023 January Hikes

Seattle temperatures are mild year-round and so one would assume that the hiking would be amazing year-round. To be honest, it kinda is. The problem is I want to hike in the mountains where the challenging elevation changes and stunning views are. Nothing wrong with that until you consider how much snow the mountains get and my aversion to snow, ice, and cold.

Since we moved here, we seldom hike in the winter. We totally could! There are plenty of low-elevation areas we can explore and, if we have the right gear, plenty of high-elevation ones too. I’ve just never had a reason to get over my snow, ice, cold aversion. Until now.

Snesha is the champion of setting and achieving insane sounding goals and this year is no different. This year she intends to conquer Mount Baker. Chris and I are not joining her. This journey is going to involve multiple nights of sleeping outside, snow, and some terrifying chasms in said snow. Hell no.

But I’m willing to help her train. To that end, we are hiking every weekend. Rain or shine. Cold or warm. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.

I was lazy and neglected to document all of our January adventures individually so here’s a hiking montage of the highlights. I skipped the first weekend because I was gaming it up at Orca Con. I may or may not continue doing a monthly recap rather than individual hike posts. I’ve not decided yet. Heck, depending on how much free time I have I may end up doing a mix of both. TBD.

Rattlesnake Ledge – Jan 16

We got a later start for this one in hopes that the fog would have broken and we’d have some great views of the lake. Turns out that someone drained the lake. We talked about whether or not it was a man-made lake and I forgot to look it up. Hold, please…

Holy freaking cow! There used to be a town called Moncton where the lake is! It is a man-made lake but not exactly an intentional one. They damned up the river near Chester Morse Lake which caused that lake to overflow and create Rattlesnake Lake.

We ascended pretty quickly. I’m sure we had a good time and talked about super-important things but I don’t remember anything worth documenting other than Snesha and I comparing our addictions to various games. She was (is?) addicted to Infinity Pool and I’m still addicted to Merge Dragons. Here are some photos because that’s what’s actually important. We. Were. Here.

Dirty Harry’s Balcony – Jan 21

Chris didn’t make it to this one. He had a hot date with various football games. They may air at normal times for those of you living in either the Central or Eastern time zones but those of us on the West coast frequently end up watching them at unusual times like 10 AM.

Snesha and I took our time on this one mainly because it was a bit icy. Plus, to be completely honest, I would have rather been in bed so I was all for taking my sweet time and being lazy as I could be while not being in bed. Somehow I still managed to overheat and so stripped down to a t-shirt on the way up. Huge mistake because I never recovered the warmth. On the 40-minute drive home, I had the heat set to 80 the entire way. I took a crazy long hot shower then camped out in front of the fireplace for several hours to regain a normal operating temperature.

One of the things we discussed on our ascent was the fact that Snesha has never made it to the balcony. She’d only been to this trail once before and, due to fun chats and poor weather, missed a key turn. By the time she and her hiking buddy at the time got onto the right trail, it was late and they weren’t able to make it to the top.

Ironically, she didn’t make it to the top this time around either. The further we went along the trail the more it was covered with snow and ice. I had my microspikes but she had forgotten hers. We were roughly half a mile from the balcony when it got too slick to be safe and we had to turn around.

Teneriffe Falls – Jan 29

This was a new to me hike but Snesha has done it a ton. There were 4 of us this go around as both Chris and Snesha’s son, Steve* (*he’s a minor so his name has been changed to protect the innocent), were able to join us.

There is a glorious waterfall at the top and it was so pretty with the ice. I spent a lot of time trying to get the perfect shot and video of it. I really wanted to use the Long Exposure feature on my phone to get a fabulous final product. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the settings correct so it didn’t work but I’ll try it again on the next water feature.

We once again took our time on the ascent mostly to help our youngest member ease into longer hikes. Our descent was probably the same pace but retying Steve’s boots near the falls did him a WORLD of good. He practically ran down the mountain and kept calling back “what’s taking you so long?” Knees kid. Bum freaking knees. I’m old. If you’re lucky, it’ll happen to you one day too.

I swear I dressed better (read warmer) for this hike but I still ended up cranking the heat in the car on the way home and then hiding under a blanket in front of the fire for several hours. I was nice to Chris. I restrained myself and only cranked the heat to 74 or 75 in the car. The blanket is this amazingly heavy unicorn print one my dad got me decades ago. It’s crazy warm and still on the couch because the cats love it too.