If you enjoy the Summit East Nordic Area in winter, don't overlook it in spring. Try to catch it with a little fresh snow on a firm crust, like this weekend. Excellent spring skiing. Dust-on-crust turning to mush-on-crust after sun came out while we sat on the summit. Perfect timing. No snowmobiles today, although they'd sorta trashed Windy Acres recently. Boat ramp not plowed; left from Hyak State Park lot. Skinned up Cold Creek road to Windy Pass, Nordic Pass, and Catherine summit under cool overcast sky, no sweat. Sun came out promptly as we sat on the summit, rest of day sunny, warm, perfect klister skiing all over the "Windy Acres" clearcut. The Nordic trails around Grand Junction were in good shape. Left via Sunrise Inner Loops, Frog Legs, Hidden Valley. Crossing the stream draining the Frog Lake basin was an issue, but there were some snowbridges. Ski tracks on the Iron Horse Trail railroad bed were in the shade but wet, unfrozen, and the klister worked like magic. Bear in mind that the Cold Creek Road crosses an avalanche chute -- I think this can be avoided if you go up the Hidden Valley route -- not an issue this time.

Weather: relatively warm; blue skies; in a word, "wonderful." Views: great from the summit. Route: we approached attained the E ridge high and from the NE. Snow conditions (except at lower elevations late in the day): loose, dry, unconsolidated snow. Above about 4000', with our small snowshoes we were sinking in more than a foot with each step. Progress was slow especially when going up. Avalanche conditions (observed): We saw no evidence of instability - even in the afternoon as the temperature warmed. Of course, we were primarily in the forest and on the north slopes. Companion: Amy.

Well, Mt Catherine was the plan but not the result. Four of us started at the Hyak parking lot near the stop sign as you enter the lot. There is a short road walk up through the neighborhood; head west from the stop sign; turn right immediately and continue northish up a low angle hill to the first switchback in the road. A blue diamond is faintly visible above the snow bank. The crux of the trip is getting across the creek which is only 50 ft from the road. From there it is a scavenger hunt looking for the next blue diamond. As we started out, the lightest 2 people floated on the snow crust; the third person punched through the crust periodically and then there was me. I seemed to punch through about every third or fourth step. At first that was OK but eventually the energy was sucked out of me. After a short while we connected with a packed out snowshoe trail with yellow circles. That was much better until we crossed under the power lines - back to blue diamond clues and to the surprise postholing for me. We lost the blue diamonds as we crossed the XC ski roads/trails. From many trips here, I knew there was a road combination that hooked up with the diamonds again but we did a short navigation exercise just for good measure. Then back into the woods; blue diamonds and good old postholing for me. Eventually, everyone took pity on me; declared lunch at a nice swail with gorgeous old growth trees and nice big snow flakes drifting down around us. Needless to say we were still quite a ways from Nordic Pass let alone Mt Catherine. When the snow conditions are good, this really is a nice trip through beautiful trees and great summit views.

Mt. Catherine is one of the few trails that you can ""summit"" within one hour and you can even hike the whole trail before starting a WTA work party. So that's what we did. Mt. Catherine is a hard trail to find as it is not very well marked. The trailhead is not too far ""east"" of the PCT trail head at Ollalie Meadows. Mt. Catherine always has bugs and it amazes me that as windy as it can be at the top of the mountain, there always seems to be mosquitoes. The trail is in pretty good shape. As part of the WTA work crew that day we made a significant improvement on the final accent access. We improved the trail that no one can see that avoids that last very steep part. It really makes it better for getting up and down! Wildlife seen - Not much Bird Seen - Juncos, Stellar Jays. A Flicker was heard! Plants - Lots of flowers ending their bloom such as Cliff Penstemon and Pearl Everlasting.

I'd glanced at this trail many times as I drove to Ollalie Meadows/Windy Pass and always thought the beginning looked so unappealing - a rocky road heading straight uphill. Finally, looking for a ridgey hike close to town that wasn't an all day affair (packing for a trip tomorrow), we gave it a try and were VERY pleasantly surprised. The trail goes into nice old forest quickly and switchbacks at an even grade uphill 1300 feet up and about 1.5 miles in to a great summit with 360 views from Rainier to Chickamin Ridge. Bugs were present but a non-issue. Thanks to some recent trailwork the tread was in great shape. We brought our 4.5 year old along and he was carried some of the way and hiked some of the way. The summit is a little exposed so we kept him in the backpack and went back down a short ways for a picnic. total roundtrip was about 2.5 hours, at a 4 year old pace. The road up has one rocky washout but we made it fine in our 2 wd passenger car.