Mount Finn 5280' 10.26.10

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With the heavy snows in the mountains I was eager to get out and see it for myself.  Since I knew the weather would more than likely be rainy I wanted to avoid hitting the worst of it by driving through it. The Tonga Ridge Road is a good way to get up high without getting out of the car. The goal was Mount Finn which is a play on it's taller neighbor Mount Sawyer. Although Finn would be tall enough to be included in the Home Court 100 it lacks 100' of prominence to be included. I thought I might be able to drive all the way to the Tonga Ridge Trailhead but I was only able to make the spur to the trailhead before snow became deeper than I felt like the Subaru could handle. There were some tracks of some bigger rigs but the center portion of the road was too deep. I slowly backed down to the intersection but began sliding and couldn't stop until I had firmly planted my passenger side wheels securely in the ditch. For those of you that follow my escapade this sounds eerily similar to two weeks ago when I did something just as disconcerting. I quickly got out to survey the situation and again only gave myself a 10 percent of actually making it out under my own power. With my trusty snow shovel in hand I dug a quick bare spot under the two wheels still on the road. I got it and tried moving forward with no luck. I rocked the car back and than forward with the pedal to the metal and was able to regain the road. I again backed down the road turned and thankfully parked.