This was the first trip of the 2007 season - it was much wetter in the northwest this winter than in California = lots of snow  We went to the Snoqualmie ski area at around 3000' and hiked to about 6100' - give or take.  this is about 1 hour from Kaj's house!  Garry came over for a conference in Seattle from London - so the timing was perfect.  None of us were truly prepared for the amount of snow - we had gaiters but we were not expecting the mass quantities of snowcone level slush - up to the knees most of the way.  Good time had by all - especially when a pair of couples who had plans to ski down caught up with us (we had been kicking steps for them all the way up - so they did not object to taking over about 300 yards from the top :-)  The snow definitely slowed us down - we hoped to get get 3 peaks that weekend and only managed 1.5

One thing to note, I used a new camera here - a Panasonic DMC-FX07 - which doesn't appear to have that great a dynamic range unless in full sunlight - a lot of the shots appear to me like we are all in the midst of mild heart failure - very ruddy faces!!  I don't remember anyone looking that blown and the one shot of me at the waterfall doesn't appear to be like that...

Pretty short distance but lots of up!  we went back the next day to pick up another peak (Guye) but got a late start and the weather wasn't that good - it started to snow and the surface had hardened and iced up significantly - we bailed out and went to REI in Redmond along with the Apple store - very different pricing than in London!