2010070808

Travel: Visiting Seattle And The Beautiful Pacific Northwest

By Olivia Barrow, The Raleigh Telegram

Saturday, July 10, 2010

SEATTLE - “Whose bag is this?” the TSA agent asked firmly, holding my bag away from her body.

Shoot, I thought. You can’t take water through security. I hastily gathered up my laptop, my cell phone, my license and boarding pass while shoving my feet into my untied hiking boots and walked back through security.

“Either drink this or throw it out,” the fearsome woman barked. I was shaking in my boots as I opened my 1 liter Nalgene bottle and started chugging. After spilling and chugging half of it, a slightly less terrifying TSA agent just told me to dump the water in the trashcan.

This vacation is off to a great start, I thought.

It was Wednesday, and I was headed to Seattle for a five day vacation to see my brother and go hiking. We had a nice three-day hike planned for the North Cascades, and I was hoping to meet some of his friends as well.

My flight to Houston was uneventful, but entertaining. I sat next to a little girl who had a cat named Gibbs and who gave me homework assignments all throughout the flight and then failed me when I turned them in late. I think I may have also signed an imaginary contract to buy 40,000 silly bands.

I arrived in Seattle around midnight, stepping out of the airport into a 58 degree evening, a welcome change from highs in the 90s at home.

My brother Philip works at the Boeing plant in Everett, which is the largest building in the world by volume. I stayed home Thursday to work from my laptop and to sleep in, recovering from jetlag. It wasn’t until my phone started ringing at 6:45 a.m. that I remembered that the three hour time change would start my work day at 6 a.m.

Unfortunately, forecasted rain and snow made avalanche danger in the region of our planned hike too dangerous for us to go, so we cancelled that trip. Rain throughout most of the Pacific Northwest limited our options as we looked for a substitute hike Thursday evening.

We settled on an 11-mile scramble in the North Cascades that looked to have decent weather, if not beautiful weather. The decision made, we headed out to find dinner. After wandering around Everett and the waterfront town of Mukilteo, we ended up at Hanami, a small sushi place with an excellent reputation.

Back home, we cranked up alternative rock throughout the house and began packing. Mount Pugh, the mountain we planned to defeat, is 7,201 feet high, so we expected a lot of snow above the tree line. I’d only ever done one snowy hike—Mount Pilchuck, a smaller peak not far from Mount Pugh. Having climbed it in July the snow was more like slush at that point.

Leaving the house around 8 a.m. Friday morning, we made it to the trailhead by 10 a.m. Hair pulled back in a bandana, armed with lots of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, trail mix, Cheetos and my faithful companion Oscar (a Canon Rebel XT digital SLR camera), we began the hike.

For the first three miles we followed an endless trail through the alpine woods, passing a wimpy little lake at the bottom of a calf-burning stretch of switchbacks. Finally, we broke out of the woods into the clearing about a thousand feet below Stujack pass, a notch between two lesser peaks apparently named for explorers Stuart and Jackson.

We stopped and had lunch on a nice flat rock with a wide open view of the valley below and distant peaks beyond.

Between us and Stujack lay a hefty climb through avalanche debris and slushy snow that buried the trail for the first half. The slush was slick and concealed many dangerous sink holes, but we struggled on. At the top of the pass an hour later, I thought our trials were over. As my head cleared the ridge, the view out the other side of the pass opened up. I caught my breath, presented with the gorgeous vista of a steep snow field and a solitary peak across the valley. We took a few triumphant pictures and then turned to see where the trail led.

Well, the trail died there, we soon realized. The snow left us on our own to find a way to the peak, so we set out. Philip went ahead, kicking steps in the snow for me to follow. I learned the value of a good ice axe there, quickly figuring out how important it was to self belay up the slopes.

We traversed horizontally until reaching what felt like a vertical wall of snow. Philip says it was more like a 70 degree slope, but I maintain it was vertical. We climbed for another hour, and the whole time I asked myself how we were going to get down. Going up is all well and good as long as you can see where you’re going.

At the end of another hour of straight climbing, we found the trail again. It disappeared under a 15-foot snowdrift, so we carefully climbed to the top. Peering over the top, we saw the summit and the final mile and a half of trail leading there.

Although the rest of the climb looked like fun, it also looked exhausting. Philip was tired, and I was already intimidated by the down-climb ahead of us, so we decided to forgo summiting the mountain and headed back down.

If I thought climbing up was rough, the down-climb was terrifying, at least at first. But I made it back in one piece.

We stopped at Applebee’s once back in Everett to satisfy Philip’s craving for mozzarella sticks. It’s so hard to order when all of your will is concentrated in not gnawing on the menu itself as you wait for the server.

As we munched on deep fried cheese, we made plans for Saturday. Sleep was number one on our agenda.

Saturday afternoon we went to an indoor climbing gym in Everett. For dinner we went to a “barbecue” at a friend’s house. I was almost devastated to find no pulled pork there, but the butter burgers grilled with cheese and bacon more than made up for that disappointment.

We woke to a rainy Sunday, but that didn’t deter my brother, so I didn’t let it deter me. We went to church, and then drove to a popular mountain east of Bellevue called Mount Si. More than 4,000 feet tall, this mountain is supposed to have a rewarding view at the top, but that day the clouds nearly obscured the entire mountain.

I thought for sure the trail would be deserted on as rainy and chilly a day as this, but I was wrong. We passed at least 50 hikers on the trail.

Had there not been distance markers on the trail every half mile, I don’t think I could have made it. We set a steady three-mile-an-hour pace and kept it up through 3 ½ miles. At the very end my feet started aching and I realized that perhaps I’d pushed myself too hard.

I got dizzy and shaky at the top, so we didn’t spend much time there. We finished our hike in just over three hours and enjoyed dinner and ice cream at an old fashioned soda shop called Scott’s Dairy Freeze.

My flight left Monday at 11 p.m., so Philip and I were able to spend some time in downtown Seattle before I left.

Not wanting to make Philip endure the same old downtown tours, we avoided the popular spots and instead took our own tour of the University District. After that we drove south along Lake Washington, enjoying the beautiful views across the water to Bellevue and envying the mansions that owned them.

In Renton Philip pointed out the landmarks from his past running and biking trips. We passed the Boeing plant where they assemble 737’s after the fuselages are sent by train, a river with a nice running trail, and a quirky gas-station-turned-espresso-shop filled with the miscellaneous junk only a dedicated packrat could accumulate.

As I boarded the plane, my one disappointment was not seeing Mount Rainier during the trip. The mountain looms huge over Seattle, a beautiful fixture in the backdrop of the waterfront city. Clouds and darkness hid the view from me the entire week.

But there’s always a next time in the gorgeous Pacific Northwest.

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