there was more snow on the way down.

Melanie was pretty jazzed about life on top of mount teneriffe. we were chilly. the views were presumably inferior to the views on days when one could see more than eight or ten feet. we weren't interested in going down the way we came.

we went to seattle (seattle! o land of coffee and drizzle, microbreweries and lush forest) in march. we did the things that one does. we waited at the airport for trains, which were barred by fate and the whims of undisclosed mechanical tomfoolery from coming to us. we gazed on mount rainier from the train stop, since this was going to be our one shot to do so. we ate dinner at converted funeral parlors. we strolled on the coast of puget sound. we went to discovery park, where Melanie sat in an illegal tree (she called the bluff, and the bluff decided to stay).



discovery park! small waves throw multifarious photons off of bedraggled branches.



there is a lighthouse, and Melanie will not look in its direction.



but Megan will make sure that Melanie looks where she is supposed to.



WE INTERRUPT REGULAR PROGRAMMING IN ORDER TO INSPECT MELANIE'S LOOKERS. LOOKS LIKE THE LOOKERS LOOK LOVELY.



the sky clears enough for sunset colors, and i look for a balanced patch of trees. these have been things that we do around town.



but sometimes we also rent cute little fiats (non-arbitrary law will eventually find its way back into our lives) and drive toward the cascades. at their feet we find mount si and mount teneriffe.



the waterfall (is it teneriffe falls? is it kamikaze falls? it is too hard when things have two names.) was the deciding factor--we decided to casually stroll up mount teneriffe.



i had no tripod and one very war-weary nikon d90. i did what i could. it's nice to have a d7100 back.



the falls fell from high above, so we went to see what is high above.



and we found a delightful ridge (the southwest one), which wound a winsome way above the lush valleys. sometimes it was broad and leisurely. other times narrow, with drops to each side.



"i'm kind of surprised that we haven't even seen any snow yet," i said. the soil was soft, dark, and damp. it was still pretty early in the year.

then the snow appeared. there was essentially a line of it. below the line, we had seen no snow. above the line, we would be in snow for several hours.

we came to a band of steep rock, home to cascading plants. i picked a route through the band. twenty five or thirty feet up, sinking my hands into the snow to try to get some small amount of purchase from something underneath, i realized that i probably hadn't chosen very well.

shortly later we found ourselves on the summit in near-zero visibility. we chose to go down by way of an allegedly easier route, and looked forward to being out of the snow in 30 or 45 minutes. the north-facing valley, though, trapped snow much longer than the southwest-facing ridge, and we were in deep snow for most of the trip down.