The Yakima Marathon non-race report (it's the journey)... photos of freakish April snow (Read 644 times)

I have another race report to write before I get to my Yakima report, but I thought I'd post a few pictures. To get to Yakima, those of us in Seattle have to go over a mountain pass in the Cascades (or drive an extra 3-4 hours)... and this year, it snowed several feet up there just before we needed to travel. It snowed for days with several Winter Storm Warnings. In April. So, if you've ever wondered what Seattle or Washington state look(s) like, here we go. I'm leaving Seattle on I-90. This is one of our two floating bridges. Yes. They float. Usually. This one SANK in 1990 on Seattle Marathon weekend. The weather generally sucks for Seattle Marathon weekend. This weekend, however, the weather was actually pretty nice by April standards. Traveling through the eastside suburb of Issaquah, about 10 miles after the previous picture. I used to live here. You can see the foothills of the Cascades through the mist. Weather is still fine. 30 minutes later, here comes the snow. Not bad, though. Right? On the way to the summit of Snoqualmie Pass. It's about to get much more impressive. Wait for it. A few miles up the road, and there it is. Thankfully, at this point in the day, the road is bare and dry. It had been icy. Note the two story tall wall of snow in the median. See the slope on the right side? This is why they do "avalanche control". Controlled (theoretically) mini-avalanches are set off by explosives and then cleaned up. Traffic is stopped for 30-120 minutes for this. When it goes well. Anyway, they did avalanche control of this spot about an hour after I passed it. This is April! I made it over the pass (woohoo) only to get stopped for an hour thanks to an accident (boohoo). I don't mean stop-and-go traffic. I mean "turn your car off and wait". And what do you do? You ponder the ridge right next to you and hope that they've either already done avalanche control here... or that it isn't necessary. You hope a lot. You also sing songs. Some people smoke. I uploaded that picture big on purpose. It's the rest of the view from my car while I waited. To the left of me is that big ridge in the previous photo. To my right is a frozen lake. See the base of the mountain and the line of trees that cross the horizontal middle of this shot? Look carefully. That's a line of vehicles that goes on as far as the eye can see. I found out later that it was over six miles long. And now we're in Eastern Washington. You know this because 1) the skies are blue and 2) there ain't no trees. Anywhere. This is the big climb up I-82 to Yakima. Mt St Helens used to be out there beyond that mountain on the right side. When it blew up in 1980, all the ash came this way. "Welcome to Yakima, the Palm Springs of Washington". Uh. Yeah. If you want really old fruit, Yakima has it! (in fairness, Yakima also has really fresh fruit. Well, depending on the season and the type of fruit you seek)

Uh...all that funny white stuff will be gone by June...right???

Nice. I grew up in that area. Good to see some pics once in a while! Here in Boulder, CO, we've had something like 5 snowstorms in the last week and a half. The biggest one dumped 17 inches at my place. Yesterday afternoon I was out running in a full-on snowstorm. The good news around here is that a) we really need the "moisture," as the weatherpeople always say, and b) the roads are usually dry the next day, no matter how big the storm was.

DAMN you make me miss Washington SOOOOOOOOO bad.

I think the Seattle RnR is calling your name!!!