Suncadia 11.2.10

   With the wife turning 40 I thought I would treat her to a night away. The inlaws were in town which provided an opportunity to have someone watch the kids that we trust. I hadn't told her until the day of providing a surprise. I was stoked the weather was picture perfect enabling us to take most of what Suncadia has to offer. The drive over was mostly spent on us reconnecting. With our busy lives sometimes we don't have enough time to do the most basic of things, unbroken conversation. I have been by Suncadia numerous times but I had never been on property. I was instantly impressed with the setup. It reminded us both of where the inlaws live in Colorado Springs.

Terence and Michael Lakes 8.4.98 From the vault #1

With recent wet weather and not being able to go out this week,. I thought I would take some time to look back and reflect on some trips that I did in my younger days. I have never posted these trips and it is fun for me to look back and remember the earlier days. I am sad that I don't have any written records of other trips I did prior to 1998. I guess I will have to make the most of what I do have.

This trip was from the summer of 1998, things in my life were somewhat different. I had just met my wife and we were dating and didn't have a mortgage or kids. My time was much less burdened than now, but I would have to say less fulfilling.

Mount Finn 5280' 10.26.10

http://m.flickr.com/photos/etecky/5118976909/sizes/m/




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.

Morpheous 5432' ( attempt )

With another stellar day forecasted I hoped to push the limits of what one might expect to do in mid October. I picked up Onelove1 in issaquah and we were off. The North Fork road was in great shape and we parked at the end of the road just past the Bare Mt trail in short order. It still was cold so we layered up and since it was going to be brushy we added full rain gear. It was cold enough that I wished I would have added gloves. The cold was short lived as the sun quickly warmed things. After 1.5 miles we hit a split in the road and headed right. Soon the road turns into the Lennox Creek Trail. I use the word trail loosely since this trail was never very good and now sees very little use making it unpleasant at times. The trail is muddy, rooty and very narrow and extremely slippery in places. This made the going quite slow. Thankfully the climb isn't steep and isn't very long.