When I was on Table on Friday, I could see across to Silver Star, which looked to have quite a lot of snow on it. So Saturday I headed up there to check out road and snow conditions. For some, possibly delusional, reason, I thought the snow on Silver Star would be more “consolidated” than that on Table and so, once again, left my snowshoes behind. The road from Washougal (#1200) was snow-free until about 300 yds from the Grouse Vista TH (and even some of that snow melted away during the day). All was good on the trail until I rounded the ridge at 2800’ – then the postholing began. With snowshoes it would have been a great experience but without, well, it’s too painful to discuss. I could see Silver Star in the distance,
but knew I wasn’t going to get there today. So I made my way (slowly) to Pt 3577, the rock outcrop just N of Pyramid Rock and took a nice long break in the sun. With snowshoes, I could have just continued along the ridge toward Silver Star,
but by then the sunbathing was working out pretty good too. Eventually, I got up and headed back to the car, thinking along the way that I had to work on my relationship with my snowshoes – how my seeming rejection of them only lead to the pain of postholing. Hopefully we can get back together again before the snow melts. Only 4 mi RT, 1600’ gain but lots of sun.
