Blowing Down the Mountain
At first when we got to the meet up spot we were slightly early at 6:40, and after waiting around 15 mintures, I feared that somehow there was a misunderstanding, but fortunatly it was'nt. We got to the trailhead early and started off on a easy road like setting. Eventually we hit snow and soon needed our snowshoes. For some reason my snow shoes pop off easy because there's not much of a tightener, or something to hold it in place after it's tight. It kept coming out of place which fortunatly after pulling it tight it worked, but without snowshoes, the hike would have been extremely tiring! As we were going up a few turned around which worried me that it would be to snowy to summit, but that was'nt so. We later got onto a more open slope with what was perhaps the best views of the trip. It's interesting that the view below the summit is better than the acual summit, although there's some other stuff we could see once at the summit. We could see Teneriff, Dixie, Si, McClellan's Butte, Kaleteen, and of coarse Rainier.
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At the summit, of coarse I had to get a EastKing shot, which is tradition, and I'm his personal EastKing pose photographer, I mean why else would I be a photographer..... to take photo's of mountains? We soon decended the summit onto the lower Crater Peak summit which was apart of the ridge, although honestly speaking it's pretty much part of Blowdown Mountain. As we were hiking through the woods, it was snowing hard with big clumps and with wind.... oh and I mean snowing from the trees, it was mostly clear out. We got to Crater Lake Peak fine although with still the same find and it was a little cold. Unbelievably EastKing got a fresh photographer to get his EastKing pose.... Perhaps I got fired...... poor me. Anyways we ate and such and took photos and soon headed back up to go down, because we had to go over the ridge.
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The way down was enjoyable, we took our old tracks back so that we would'nt end up losing were we were. It started to become hot out, but not to terribly hot, but sorta a nice hot, but gave me a slight dizzy feel to it. We were a bit tired going down, due to all the snow, plus the snowshoes were hurting my feet. Later we got out of the snow which was a releif to my feet. I talked a bit with Craig and .... that one other guy. We all got to the parkinglot safely, once again another great trip. This trip really enlightened me and cheered me up! I would say more, but sometimes you gotta be there to really know it.
