Carl_Skoog

Here is some beta. Don't completely rely on the accuracy of the lines drawn on the map. Since they weren't measured on a GPS, and we were trying to get out of there rather than study the situation, it is only an approximation. Bachelor Creek Trail Travelling in the downed timber for now is only slow. You can make it a little easier by travelling along the "flow" lines and reducing the number of times you have to cross downed logs, since it looks somewhat similar to the blast zone from the Mt. St. Helens eruption. Once the brush starts growing up to fill in the area, it only is going to get worse (lots of sky exposed now). The creek is running pretty high, and is larger than you can easily jump across, like you would ordinarily do during summer. We made a log bridge near the last stand of trees before it opens up (remember, we were going down at that point so it made the most sense since we could follow snow to nearly that crossing point). Even at that, we wore crampons on the logs, and would have had balance problems without using our ski poles. With all of those aids, it was reasonably secure. You don't want to fall into the creek right now.

Here was an example of what happens when they don't guard the trailhead: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=friendly+fire+ski&hl=en&lr=&selm=66086d%24s75%241%40halcyon.com&rnum=1 The folks with that division of the DOT have shown a history of not having much concern for recreational needs. One example of this is even though the road was cleared for more than a week prior to the highway opening to the public this year, they still had only partially plowed parking spots at Blue Lake Trailhead. Yet they had already plowed all the way to the restrooms for the Washington Pass overlook, but gated that spur road indefinitely. Seems like their plowing efforts would have been initially better spent on something that they were going to let the public actually use. There was that spring a couple of years ago where they claimed there to be so much snow that for the first week or so of the highway opening they officially declared no parking between Rainy Pass and Cutthroat Lake trailhead, because they hadn't gotten around to plowing parking pullouts. I think they think their customer is someone that wants to drive over to the other side to go fishing, rather than someone that is going to stop along the roadway to enjoy the snow or climbing.