Mt Pilchuck Adventure

This is our adventure on Mt Pilchuck! It starts with us taking way too long to pack up our gear at the house and not leaving until about one thirty in the afternoon even though we intended on leaving way earlier. We left the house, drove through Granite Falls, down the Mtn Loop Highway to Mt Pilchuck Rd. We only made it a couple miles up the road when we realized that we weren’t going to be able to make it to the parking lot in John’s  Envoy since he had no 4 whele drive. This realization only happened as we began to slide backwards towards the edge of the road and the steep slope into the woods which lay below the road. This is when we also realized that we didn’t have  any chains as well. After all the preparation that we had done we neglected one of the more important details; how we were going to get to the trail head. Justin and I got out of the Envoy and helped John, who isn’t very experienced in the snow because of the fact that he moved here from New Orleans and the highest mountain in Louisiana is eight hundred feet. Not much experience in the snow and ice to say the least. We turned the car around and drove back down the road to the trail head of Heather Lake, got out, and started thinking about what we were going to do.

We quickly realized that we still could make it, and not only that but we had to make it to the look out, especially because I had told everybody on Facebook to look up at the top of Pilchuck at 8:00pm sharp to see us up there. So we decided the best way to actually be able to make it that we were going to have to go up the road as high as we could, park the car, and start walking with the hope that we would get picked up by somebody that would take us up to the top parking lot and the trail head. We got all ready, started walking, and before walking a hundred yards we hear a truck coming up the road. So driving up the road was this lady driving with who looked like her mom in the passenger seat driving a little truck. Exactly what we were looking for! We waved her down and asked her for a ride and she kindly accepted our request. We jumped in the back with all of our backpacks, snowshoes, and gear and we were off. I could just imagine what they were thinking! Here we are, three guys with what must have seemed like a weeks worth of stuff on our backs waving down these poor old ladies for a ride. When they pulled over we were shocked that we got picked up so fast and we were extremely excited as well. John busted out the video camera and started filming all the excitement. We get up to the trail head and jump out of the truck ready for our adventure. Of course the lady driving was all worked up about what we were setting out to do but we affirmed that we knew what we were doing, or at least we thought we did. So by this time it is already about 3:30 and it was going to take at least three hours to hike to the top so we knew that it was going to be dark a good portion of the hike.

 So now we were on the trail and we started hiking. I had one of John’s old Navy backpacks. We made it to the Granite Gardens on the way up just in time to watch the sun go down. We eat our sandwiches, climbed around on the rocks and watched the sun disappear under the Olympics. It was perfect; it was a very majestic, tranquil, and peaceful place! After the Granite Gardens we kept on hiking and we made it another mile or so until we had to put our snowshoes on. Now, by this time it was already dark and very cold, and the trail was already starting to disappear from the wind. We came to our first little climb up this hill as the trail opens up into the bowl underneath the look out tower. This is where the old ski lifts ran and where people skied back in the seventy’s. So this was our first test of our will power and it was a little tough just because we didn’t have our snowshoes on yet, but we made it. It was at the point that we knew we needed our snowshoes on for the rest of the hike. We continued on what we thought was the trail but as time went on we managed to loose track of where everybody else was climbing that day. It wasn’t a huge deal though because we knew the direction that we needed to go and there are a few ways to get up, but it was dark at this point and the wind was beginning to pick up a little bit so I got a little uneasy at times, especially when we got to the top of an slope and came to the end of the tracks. At this point we didn’t know if we wanted to try to keep pushing it to try to see if we could find another path or if we should turn back around down the steep hill and try another route. We decided to turn around, John was disappointed! Little did know that it was about a fifty foot face about five feet in front of us. I found that out the next morning when we were hanging out eating some snacks and we heard in the distance a hiker talk with his friends that he was following some snow shoe tracks and the tracks ended as well and I saw the cliff underneath his feet. So as went back from where we came about 50 yards or so back down the mountain which led us back to where we saw foot prints leading up the mountain. This part of the hike was intense at times because I knew that we didn’t have a choice to turn around and we had to get up to the look out because we had no other option. As the tracks tapered back into one trail it began to traverse along the side of the mountain on the way up to the look out. The moon was bright and brilliant by this time so it was very accommodating along with our headlamps for illumination of the trail. This whole experience of hiking in the dark along the side of a mountain overlooking all of the people and all what we know below was a very pleasant and enjoyable experience. I got a sense that this is a unique experience in our lives that we were really going to enjoy and cherish as we grow older. The last little bit of the trail was very steep right before the look out. Normally during the summer the trail traverses slowly climbing the side of the mountain but with all the snow everybody decided it would be quicker to go straight up so that’s what became the trail and we followed those tracks. John and Justin climbed before me and then I followed below them. This slope was by far the steepest slope that we had yet conquered. I climbed using all fours like a wild animal trying to sneak up on its prey. I remember it was an amazing feeling seeing the look out tower for the first time that night. It seemed to sneak up on us faster than what we had anticipated and we were very happy about this. We arrived at about seven, which was perfect because we had to light off our fire works at 8:00pm sharp because there were friends and family watching like dad, grandpa, and all the people down at John and Alicia’s for their Christmas party as well as all the people that had no idea they were about to see a show in the sky above them. We climbed up the icy path and up the latter and finally we had arrived. It was all of what we could have hoped for. It was clear skies not to much wind and nobody else was there. We opened up the shutter protecting the door walked in and started setting up our home or the night. Quickly we realized that the rafters were going to work for our Hammocks which were nice because we didn’t want to have to put up the hooks that we had bought earlier at Wal-Mart on the way up. It took us a little while to get everything organized but soon enough we had all the food in one corner, gear in another, heater on the floor going strong, and our Hammocks up ready for us to enjoy.

 Five minutes before Eight I realized that we were cutting it dreadfully close to the time that we had told everybody that we were going to do something to show we were there. We gathered all the mortars and carried them down the icy lady and set them up out of harms way and by 8:01 we lit the first set. It was perfect. We had accomplished yet another goal for the night. It was as though we were kids again playing with fireworks for the first time. After the fire works we eat our dehydrated beef stew that we lugged up along with some honey mead that John made. After dinner we just soaked in the killer view of Snohomish County. We were amazed how vivid we could see everything. It was really easy to make out all of the cities like Everett, Monroe, Snohomish, Stanwood, Marysville, even Seattle. It was perfect just hanging out drinking tea from the snow off the side of the look out, relaxing in the hammock, and drinking mead. We went to sleep around twelve, or at least I fell asleep around twelve. John and Justin weren’t so lucky. I think John only got probably an hour of sleep all together because he was so cold. It was funny the day after we got home from the trip John bought a sleeping bag rated down to 0 degrees! I woke up at about six because I was getting cold myself. It was just in time to get prepared to watch the sun rise over the mountains. 

It was by the far the greatest sun rise that I had ever seen. We watched it slowly creep up over about where Mt Index is. After enjoying the sun we made some tea and warmed up a little bit with what was left of the propane. It was funny, we ran out of gas just as the water for the tea started to boil. It worked out perfect, just as everything else did on the trip. We headed out about eleven or so after spending a little time hanging out and taking some pictures on the surrounding boulders aside the look out tower. We started the descent down the mountain after we found the tracks, which took a while to find. We made it about half way down the mountain to where it starts heading back into the woody area of the mountain when we talked with two guys who thought it might be a good idea to go straight down instead of following the trail. We only had to talk about it for a second and then we agreed it would be fun so we did it. I don’t think John particularly wanted to given the fact that he only slept an hour and he was dead tired but followed right along without hesitation. We started down and we ran into some tight spots and steep slopes but after a few hours we managed to make it. We made it to the parking lot which was great but we still needed to find a ride down to the car so we weren’t out of the woods yet.

 We hung around for a while and then we spotted a truck and we knew that it would be our best opportunity. I went up and asked the guy with his son if we could catch a ride and thankfully we were more then happy. I could tell that he had a ton of respect for us that we had climbed to the look out and spent the night. It was cool to see him talk to his son about what we had done. As we drove down the road to the car we realized that we had finally pulled it off and we were more then thrilled, we were ecstatic! This trip was by far the greatest adventure of our lives so far but not the last. After this climb we have collectively decided to go on many more adventures as times go on and I have no doubt we will. I’m very proud that we accomplished what we had set out to do; spend the night at the top of Mt Pilchuck. We are in my mind officially mountaineers!