Weekend in the Pass.

[derekl_1963]

Had our friends Chas and Andy up for the weekend and headed up to Stevens Pass...



Chas and Andy showed up Friday evening (late, as per their habit). We had quite intended to start early Saturday, but not going to bed until really early Saturday (I.E. 3AM) kinda put an end to that plan, so most of Saturday was spent hanging about and chatting. We finally got our act more-or-less together and headed up into the pass in the mid afternoon.

As we were going through Monroe, we decided that Italian sounded proper for dinner, and ended up at a little Italian place in Sultan. "Dave's Pizza and Pasta - Breakfast*Lunch*Dinner" didn't sound too promising - but we tried it on a lark and it turned out to be surprisingly good. (A shout out goes here to Andy's TomTom which lead us there, this and other experiences across the weekend convinced that such devices aren't entirely a waste of time as I had previously thought.) We headed up the pass and ended up at the Stevens Pass Hotel at Gold Bar. Not a bad place over all, friendly staff and clean rooms - but I'm not entirely sure the bed was much softer than the pavement in the parking lot. (On the other hand, the water in the shower could actually be turned up to hot.)



Watching Monroe grow over the years, and chain restaurants slowly creep up Hwy 2, I wonder how much longer little mom 'n pop places like this will survive. Startup, just a little way back down the Pass, is already over run with kitschy little gift and artsy stores.

Just across the road is the Skykomish river, which we watched right at sunset.





Brenda contemplates the river and the mountains beyond... She looked so calm and relaxed...

The first stop the next day was the town of Skykomish, where we've always enjoyed wandering. We didn't get to do too much as essentially the entire town was a construction zone because of the cleanup activities to remove/remediate years of pollution from railroad operations in the town.

The next stop was Deception Falls - if you haven't been here you really should visit. There's a walkway back under the highway that takes you practically into the falls. The view (and the noise!) is incredible.



One of the things we wanted to do was to seek out some geocaches, but all of them were off on side roads and every attempt to reach them was greeted with this:



As the van isn't a 4WD, we didn't even try...

Still, the views were incredible.



We drove various parts of the old Cascade Highway over the course of the day. Some, in the Steven Pass historic district, have been restored... But elsewhere the road is slowly returning to nature.



We ended our stay on the mountain with a short (~1 mile) hike on a portion of the Iron Goat Trail. If you look at the map [PDF link] we hiked east from the Martin Creek trailhead to the crossover at milepost 1718, up the (very steep) switchback, then west to switchback above the trailhead and back down. The upper and lower trails are fairly level, but the switchbacks gain 120' of vertical distance in about 300' of horizontal travel and are fairly rough going.

The view from the upper trailhead:



This pretty much wiped us out... So it was back down the mountain to Edmonds and the ferry back home. (And another shout out to TomTom here - I missed the exit from 5 to the ferry, but the voice in the box steered us via an alternate route right to Edmonds Way.)