in the heart of the wildest and most spectacular place I know.

(not my photo)

4 April 2009. So I am now sitting at a park table next to the Skagit River staring off at some distant peaks coated in snows behind a foreground ridge of trees and just enjoying the quiet of the scene. Not as quiet as up far away removed in the mountains but the Skagit is flowing calming and quietly and making the most beautiful sound that only gentle rivers make. After a last-minute call to a very friendly ranger named Joyce in Marblemount yesterday, an aptly-timed weekend of absolutely beautiful weather and finding out the off-chance that the Cascade River Road is being plowed (due to construction on the bridge that washed out a few miles from road's end near Cascade Pass last year) - all of these combined to make up my mind for me in an instant to attempt to head up to the most perfect lookout tower perched atop Hidden Lake Peak in North Cascades National Park. I have been lusting after this spot for a couple of years it seems now and the timing seemed perfect (or so I thought). So up at four-thirty after finally making it to bed just a few hours earlier. It promised to be a gorgeous day - the moon had set and the stars were still out, then an hour later fog clung to cold ground in Everett signs displaying the temperature right at freezing, and after that rays of sunlight piercing fogs along the North Cascades Highway as I made my way to the town of Marblemount. A quick stop first at my usual espresso stand in Sedro Wooley and another at the ranger station (still closed for the season, so it was good fortune I was able to connect with a ranger yesterday). I was not bringing a tent this time, confident the lookout would be unlocked waiting for me. There was of course no one else parked off the side of Cascade River Road this early in the season when the road leading twenty-five-hundred feet up the steep hillside to the trailhead was still snowed over. I knew I was safe leaving it behind stashed safely away in the trunk. After one or two feeble attempts to get Oliver to jump the pile of snow from the plow that took care of Cascade River Road and blocking the first bit of almost-clear road up and out of sight, I quickly conceded and parked him next to it. I gathered my stuff, finished stuffing a few last-minute things in my pack and was off. I initially made good time up the fairly steep road, but in about fifteen minutes was strapping on snowshoes as the snow now completely covered the road and quickly became quite deep. And deeper. And deeper. And deeper. After having climbed just about a thousand feet in what I estimated to be less than two miles, it became nearly ridiculous. Of course I knew the Cascades had gotten hammered just a few days ago with several feet of snow, but this little fact had been obscured by all the other seemingly perfect pieces fitting together that it hadn't become apparent until this moment. And I began sinking up to my knees. On every step. The chore of punching through crusted-over powder snow made the task of walking quite a chore. Each step was labored with snow clinging to my boots and snowshoes and my at-one-point typical speedy pace slowed to a crawl. But despite this, I was highly-motivated, thinking perhaps if I could make the distance to the trailhead a thousand feet higher and still three miles away perhaps by chance or good fortune I would find the trail starting up to Hidden Peak following a windswept ridge. So I plunged on. And on. And on. Frustratingly always in shadow despite knowing the day was absolutely gorgeous. And I almost made it, perhaps shy of the trailhead by a quarter mile, finally conceding after negotiating the first of two creek crossings-turned-avalanche slopes (on which, even desperately exhausted, I made a valiant effort not to dawdle). It was just past this - at the point my legs felt like they would fall off or just completely cease to function - I ripped off my snowshoes after stomping out a decent patch of solid snow for myself on which to throw my pack as there was absolutely no solid surface anywhere to be found - everything instead coated with feet upon feet of fresh snow. And for the first time in over three hours I sat down - exhausted, starving and thirsty. But it was beautiful in the sun-drenched open space of the creek basin, where I could see a couple of peaks draped in snows. I took my time eating my lunch, gazing up at an unnamed peak above me that seemed to stretch up nearly forever but that I knew was eight-hundred feet lower than the lookout tower for which I was aiming. I am not sure if that thought or the sheer exhaustion from the effort to get to this point - still five miles and thirty-five-hundred feet shy of the thought of crashing in a bed tucked in a corner of a lookout tower with views to the North Cascades nearly unrivaled - was what blew the wind out of my sails, but it was at that point I decided to go no further. Still, after finishing lunch, I thought I felt a bit of a second wind and so took off back up the road, still trying to cover that last quarter mile to the trailhead to get a glimpse at what might lie ahead. This new-found vigor lasted maybe a hundred steps, at which point I knew I was spent and also that I still had five miles to return. So I conceded again to the snow, this time my own frustration instead of Oliver's. I guessed and had to accept it was not meant to be despite seemingly everything else being in perfect alignment. So I begrudgingly turned around, with a last look up the road that curved out of sight and that unnamed peak that lied along the ridge connecting itself to Eldorado. The return was nearly just as brutal. I plunged through forests the snow just as deep as the road to cut the switchbacks in an attempt to ease my suffering (which probably worked, at least a little). After a fairly agonizing but still joyful two-and-a-half hour descent, I found myself back at the Cascade River Road apologizing to Oliver that we would be leaving sooner than planned. The question may come to mind about the idea of joyful agony and what does one do to ease the bit of plunging through at one point where I could see a patch of road snow I estimated to be anywhere between twelve and fifteen feet deep? Hmm, apparently go to great lengths to amuse oneself, which seemed to take on a whole new level given the facts I was probably slightly delirious and also knew there was no else around (certainly no one crazy enough to attempt what I was doing, or perhaps just wiser not to try). And so despite the agony, the time passed quickly and - yes - enjoyably. And then there I was, sitting on Oliver's bumper gulping cold Simply Orange I had stashed in the snow thinking I would want it cold when I returned the next day wishing all the same I had not been defeated, that I was still up there making a go up the ridge pushing through the exhaustion of plunging through new snows with each step. Maybe just another hundred paces. Or a hundred vertical feet on my altimeter. Anything to be closer to the lookout. But alas, apparently it was not meant to be and this I eventually could accept. Crawling back down the road I gained a perspective at just how far I had come, and could see how deep each footstep really was as I crashed back into them. I do not know though, I have heard of climbers being defeated by atrocious snow conditions (even having been in the past myself - although that from a blizzard during a night on Eldorado). But the difficulty with this was it was perfectly beautiful out - just two days after the blizzard, and so I had no perspective on how horrible it must have been during the storm. Only a perfect day where I seemed to perhaps have given in too easily. Maybe with an extra day that I did not have? But in the end - sitting now next to the Skagit staring back up at the peaks where I was surrounded hours earlier - no worries I guess. I will be back for another take. But I cannot help feeling sad, wishing I would be spending the afternoon my journal and book (The Wild Cascades Forgotten Parkland of course) spread out on the desk in the lookout, my sleeping bag cast on the bed, my stove and lantern on a table ready for evening and a cup of hot chocolate (which I even made a special stop for back in Sedro Wooley, having forgotten it the night before). Me outside, bundled up in Montbell down zipped up to the collar standing against the building staring off across the Cascade River Valley to Eldorado's Inspiration Glacier, Johannesburg, Baker and peaks upon peaks in every direction still cloaked in the cover of winter's brilliant white listening to Moby's My Weakness or The Sun Never Stops Setting on iPod a thousand thoughts in my mind but totally and completely at peace next to this perfect little shelter perched at seven thousand feet in the heart of the wildest and most spectacular place I know. I would at some point head in to make dinner, the sound of the stove always welcome, the glow of the lantern comforting as I jotted down some notes or read a bit before climbing into down to fall asleep to the sound of absolutely nothing surrounded on all sides by windows and outside of them mountains - some known to me, most not but crazy spectacular nonetheless. But most of all maybe a feeling if even just for a night of being home.