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The forecast called for mostly sunny skies on Wednesday, January the 27th, so immediately my flag went to high alert for the possibility of maximum skiing enjoyment. I called a few friends to see if they could go skiing -- three calls later, three skiers were signed up for a ski tour up Mt. Cashmere's North East shoulder and a 5a.m. meeting time was scheduled.

The next morning a call from Adam McKenney, the owner of Leavenworth Mountain Sports, reported that he had gotten sick overnight. "I thought I could pull it off, but I can't -- I am going back to bed," he says. This is a major disappointment because Adam will break trail the entire way and when you get to the top he turns into a professional avalanche ski cutter. We've lost our secret weapon but we press on.

Darkness turns to daylight as we take our first steps from the snow machines onto Mt. Cashmere. Now we can see what we have been seeing most of the winter around Leavenworth: dense fog. They say you never know till you go but at that point we knew what we were getting and it was fog for breakfast. No worries, we press on with the dream of climbing up and out of the fog.

Three thousand vertical feet up the shoulder of our objective we give in and decide that there is no sunshine to be found. We lose the go-fast, get-it-all-done attitude by settling in for a nice break and building a wonderful fire. After a long rest filled with cheese, crackers and , of course Sam's 3 pounds of Kentucky Fried Chicken, we press on towards Cashmere's false summit.

Soon we see a little blue. We climb on. Before long it's all blue and the scene before us is filled with islands of mountains rising from a sea of fog.

Needless to say we feel lucky. Here are some of the images we brought back home.

 

Birdman Skis with Dragontail, Colchuck, Argonaut, Sherpa and Stuart looking on.

 

Sam Broaddus walks into the light.