Westward Ho!: Mount Washington

We met a couple at church from Australia, who are here in Nanaimo house sitting for six months. This is their fifth year here house sitting. He travels up to Mount Washington cross country skiing three days a week. At coffee after church last week he asked if we would like to join him for a day up there.......

Well we drove up monday morning, about 1 1/2 hours to Raven Lodge, which is for cross country skiing and snowshoeing. Higher up is the Alpine Lodge for the down hill skiing. We rented the snowshoes, fastened them to our hiking boots and headed out. The snow was well packed on the trails and the studs on the bottom of the shoes dig firmly into any ice patches. The trail was quite steep and was three km around. I think we climbed about 150 ft or about 15 flights of stairs up. Quite invigorating, but the views on that sunny day were spectacular. Never possible to capture in a picture.

We climbed up to the highest piont on the trail, stopping often to breath, partly due to the altitude. On the trail down, which was of course just as steep, I was following Bev and noticed one of the straps on her snowshoe was loose. I said, stop there and I will fix it. So I bent over, facing down the hill, and as I bent over, continued right over, so that I slid down the hill on my back. We both laughed so hard, I could hardly get back up. All was well and we carried on down the hill without further mishaps.

This is a scene from the back seat of our friend's car. The straight cut snow is from the snow blowers that clear the snow from the road. there is far to much snow to use a plow. The mountains, not too clear in the mist, are on the main land. The lodge we went to is 1050 ft altitude.