Saturday, January 30, 2010

Cross Country Skiing at Mt Ranier

Today I got up at 0530 and was underway from the house at 0630. A stop for Mc Breakfast at Spanaway and I was at Paradise at 0930. The temp was actually quite warm at 33Deg. There was a couple inches of new snow.

I left the parking lot and skied down the road in Paradise Valley to Reflection Lakes. The distance to the lakes is 3 miles, but I continued on for another 1/2 mile to where the road starts going downhill into Stevens Canyon. The conditions stayed good with some new snow falling most of the day, but it got warmer and when I finally got back to the truck, it had warmed to 35Deg.

On the return back up Paradise Valley, my toes started hurting from the pressure of the plastic boots. I have not used this ski gear very much, so this was a bit of a surprise. My toes hurt so bad that I was not sure I could get back to the parking lot and when I did, I could hardly walk to the truck. I will probably loose the toenails, something that happens often anyway.

As soon as I started driving down off the mountain, it started raining and most of the way home, it rained really hard making it hard to see while driving.

Just before I got to the parking lot, a fox came by me. He seemed totally unafraid of me. I tried to get video, but could not get the camcorder turned on in time.

Reflection Lake


Skiing down Paradise Valley

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Reflection Lakes in the winter is a great place. Sounds as if you need bigger or maybe just wider boots. Our feet spread out as years are added, when people are in their 20's may have had medium widths and after retirement that expands to a wide width.