What a Bust!

Snowshoeing Blewett Pass? 3/17/07

The weekend's weather prediction was rain, rain, and more rain with a touch of rain. But I wanted to go snowshoeing, and I wanted to go bad. After I had fallen while walking the washed out Carbon River Road, Michael & I took the dogs on a little road trip to Eastern Washington. We hopped over the mountains on I-90, bopped up to Wenatchee over Blewett Pass, swung down the Columbia River to Yakima before heading back over the mountains at White Pass. What stood out in our minds, other than the speeding ticket near Yakima, was the beauty of snow and ice along highway 97 over Blewett. This we had to come explore again. So we did, this last weekend. However, where there were feet of snow just a month before, there was only patches. I was disheartened.

As Michael wasn't feeling in top condition, we decided just to explore the area around the Teanaway River, a valley we had never explored before. As you drive up to Blewett, you drive around the edge of the valley, a beautiful valley full of farms and ranches, pick-up trucks and barns. Neither of us had explored this valley, so as we drove back to Cle Elum we turned onto the Teanaway River Rd. We saw beautiful expanses of land with fancy houses, horse barns, and geese swimming in ponds. Out each stretch of road were places we chattered about exploring later in the spring. Places that we had talked about visiting but had yet to do. This year, with so much damage to our favorite haunts after the November storm, we'd be able to fit a few of these in. The day wasn't completely lost then.

One other thing we stopped to enjoy, a beaver pond along Hwy 97 - just off the road in Liberty Creek. I was startled when I realized that the girdling I saw on fully grown trees was the work of our little flat-tailed friends. Until then I had thought beavers only gnawed on saplings and small trees, not these adult-sized pines. Then, to have built his pond right next to the road. Sometimes nature really does surprise us by defying civilization.