[sarbar]

Yesterday Dicentra, Ford and me headed up Hwy 410 to do Crow Lake on a whim. Chinook pass was completely socked in, with slushy snow on the road early. As soon as we crossed the pass, the snow withered away. We got to the TH with blue skies, but it was pretty chilly. We saw that Ridgescrambler and Durante616 were already there and long gone up. We hit the trail. The trail is in reasonable shape with maybe 8 blowdowns in the first 2 or so miles, and some corner damage on the switchbacks caused by horses, so popular on the trail. As we crossed the drainages, leaving Miner Creek, and coming into the subalpine zone, we started getting snowed on lightly. At this point we could look down on American River and Chinook Pass-which was rapidly disapearing-a huge black storm was coming over the Cascades. We kept on going doing the switch to Survey Creek drainage. We hit snow on the hogback ridge, small patches on and off. The mud on the steep trail though was the fun....step, slip, step, slip fun! Just below the ridge we encounter a huge snowfield on the trail...somewhere in the 4 mile range up-near 5600ft or so. The storm was moving in fast, it was baout 35* in the howling windm and it was snowing. Di and me looked at each other and said "we have had enough"!! The snowfield was a fun climb of at least 8 ft to get up on it and we didn't want to be in the storm. So we headed down and made good time-and ran into Crwdog and his wife on the way down, maybe 2 miles from the bottom. We all hiked out together, and watched Fife's Peaks disapear in the oncoming storm. We said goodbye, and Di and me decided to head home via Yakima...then onto 97 to Ellensburg for dinner at the chinese joint. We headed home on I-90, encountering rain all over Snoqualmie. Was a nice workout and road trip at least!