Woke up this morning to several more inches of snow in Anacortes. No need to even leave Fidalgo Island for a ski. After a lazy morning we waxed our skis with the intention of skiing up the road to the summit of Mt. Erie. Unfortunately that road was already tracked up by vehicles, 4-wheelers. We decided to go to the Whistle Lake parking area and head up those trail. When we got there the parking lot was tracked but there were no other vehicles and the road was clear of tire tracks. As we got ready another couple skied by on skinny skis (we're on randonee gear –overkill for this kind of skiing). The road starts out at a slight incline. At a fork we opted to go toward the lake. The trail around the lake looked like it had enough coverage so we took that route. Our tour ended up being twice as long as I thought we were going to get but we ended up summitting Sugar Loaf on our skis then working our way back to the northeast part of the park. Here's the album.
Month: December 2008
Why go to the mountains when there's plenty of skiing right here? The trip turned out to be more of an expedition than we planned. In fact when we started out Randy asked if I wanted to go the long way. Didn't see why not so we actually headed south on single track before curving back north toward the Monument. We skied primarily on single track through the trees but did ski the road in places where the trails don't connect. We had the place entirely to ourselves even though we followed snow shoe tracks from the previous day for a short time. It was cold at the Monument so we didn't linger except to finish eating our meager snack. We had planned on a 2-hour ski (probably thinking mountain bike time); it ended up being a 5 1/2-hour ski. I admit that my legs are a little sore today. Here's the album.