Snowshoeing to Hurricane Hill

Last weekend, for the first time ever, I went snowshoeing. I had to borrow all of my gear, but luckily everything had a one-size-fits-all kind of thing goin' on. Equipped with a set of shoes, poles, gloves, a cozy hat, and four friends, the day went really really well. The weather was relatively nice, hovering around 35-40 degrees with little to no wind, and the trail itself was an easy one.

Tell me I don't look like a natural.

So we were hoping to go to the end of Hurricane Hill, but it turned out that some of the snow had melted away, and I guess its bad to walk with snowshoes on solid ground. A couple people were telemark skiing, too, so taking off our stuff and hauling it didn't seem like a great option. Anyway, we saw what we were coming to see.

This is the visitor's center, which, when the road that leads up to it isn't too crappy, is open year round. On this particular day there were probly 20-30 people milling around, looking for this view and that view.

I love bird's eye view maps. Something like this, or this, or this. They're just so incredible to me, I duno, they just have that special something that makes you go, "wow, that's pretty cool". Anyway, as you can imagine, I really like this topographic 3D representation of the Olympic mountain range inside the visitor's center.

Looking ahead at the group.

You can see the snow is starting to melt. Doesn't bother me one bit, good riddance, I say.

Some explorer in some century or another passed by the mountains on a boat to the west of the peninsula and proclaimed them the Olympic Mountains because he was sure that the Greek gods of old lived atop them... this was all based on the clouds, which as you can see from the picture are something spectacular.

I should have rotated... don't they look awed?

See the land off yonder? That looks like Canada, ey?

In the very middle of the picture you can just barely make out a snowy formation called a cornice: kind of a hardened piece of snow hanging over an edge... usually created by heavy winds. Wouldn't want to step on that thing, it'd be a nasty fall. The top of that ridge is Hurricane Hill by the way, our final destination. Afterwards we turned around and headed back.

That's all for now.