randosaigai.com
Secret Stash, September 3, 2005
Kelvin Wu gets September in the books . . .
Snow reports were dire as Kam Leang rolled into town from Virginia, but we'd just flipped another page on the calendar and turns had to be made. A late-night e-mail rounded up a group consisting of Allyson Spacek, Kelvin Wu, Skip Swenson, Kam and myself for a morning run to a prominent Cascade volcano that certainly had SOME snow left on it, and we made the five-plus mile hike in to the "goods" . .
Snowfields we had expected to see were gone, replaced by enormous columns of basalt with a chossy rock approach, and the glacier above was a mass of filthy, ominous crevasses and precarious seracs. We made the best of the situation and yo-yo'ed a tiny, 25 vertical foot snowpatch that was rock-hard nev� for the bottom 15 feet, making for some rather heavy impacts with the rocks at the bottom.
For apr�s ski fun, we climbed a bit further up the mountain and cleared our heads before making the trek out, loading up on caffeine at the classic Wapati Woolies store in Greenwater before returning to Seattle for Kelvin's "surprise" birthday party at SkiBuilders.com corporate headquarters.
