It’s a full-on weather inversion in central Washington right now. Yakima and most other valleys surrounding the Cascades are socked in with gloomy, cold conditions while the higher elevations are clear-skied and warming up by the hour. The kind of days where you just have to get in the car and enjoy it. It was in the 50s at White Pass today at the same time we had temps in the upper 20s. 8,000 ft elevations are around 50 degrees, 10,000 even are near 40. Unbelievably nice. I’ve been itching all week to get out in the mountains for some hiking or snowshoeing.

Except that our furnace stopped working yesterday, so we’re vetting repairs and potential furnace replacement companies tomorrow. It’s not the worst thing in the world since we were planning on replacing the old-school oil set-up fairly soon anyway. I was just hoping we could wait until nicer weather to deal with the logistics. And I want to be snow-camping right now. Looks like the inversion is hanging around for a bit though so, hopefully Saturday or Sunday will bring some quality outdoor time.

Parko ate sixteen hot dog buns today in about a fifteen minute period. Eight when I left him alone in the car with a bag of groceries and eight more when I left the replacement hot dog buns unsupervised on the kitchen counter for thirty seconds. Impressive devastation. Fool me twice.

A little more snow early today. I took the dogs out for runs at Cottonwood and Cowiche Canyon.

And then lots of wet snow here tonight (6″ maybe as of right now) with a big system moving through the Pacific northwest. I usually love the snow when it comes here, but this time it means that Mary’s probably stranded in Twin Falls, ID for a day until the weather moves through. Trapped behind one pass in Oregon. So close.

First snow of the year this morning. Woke up to a quarter inch on the ground. It mostly melted in the yard throughout the day, but when I took the dogs out for a run at Cowiche Canyon this afternoon all the sagebrush and cheat grass was still lightly dusted. It threw off my perception to see all the greens and browns masked, like some sort of landscape-wide Photoshop filter.

Mary and Nora are on their way west, stopped in Lincoln, NE at a Comfort Suites at the moment. The early travel weather forecast is nice in the Midwest, but a little snow seems to be cropping up now in the western mountains. Wyoming, always Wyoming. I’m trying to play virtual road condition navigator with all the DOT websites, so hopefully they can dodge anything too dicey. Looking probably like a four-day trip though, sticking to daylight.

Well, that’s more like it. In the 50s and sunny most of the weekend. November was miserable. Really miserable. Just seemed to be cloudy, cold, and rainy every day. I don’t remember a run of weather like that here ever. Bring on December! All that rain has definitely re-greened things up around here though. Here are a couple green pictures from the backyard.

Went rock climbing at The Cave yesterday afternoon. Blue skies, nice temps (air and rock). Some lingering slippery spots in the shade or near any vegetation. Climbed Age of Consent (5.8), then rapped off of Childhood Injury (5.10B) with the intent to top rope it, but bailed due to water runoff on the rock about half way up. Also pulling quite a bit of rope drag seemingly off the sloping rock just below the anchor. So we scooted to the west and in the dwindling daylight climbed Children of a Lesser Chaos (5.8) and Flake Crack (5.7). Nothing too tough, just happy to be outside in shorts and a t-shirt in December.

I took Taylor and Parko on a little Tieton excursion yesterday afternoon. Nice day, partly sunny, temps in the 60s. No real destination in mind, just started driving. Westbound we stopped at Rimrock Lake and ran around on the rocky/mucky shoreline exposed from the reservoir drawdown.

From there I started thinking about hiking out from White Pass like I’d done with Parko earlier in the summer. The further west we headed though, the more the weather turned overcast and rainy. Below left: looking west toward clouds. Below right: looking back east toward nicer weather.

I ended up driving all the way to White Pass, but turned around in drizzly conditions and backtracked a few miles to the Sand Ridge trailhead, a spot I’d noted on the drive into the clouds. It looked boring (as you’d expect I guess with a name like Sand Ridge) and there were no other cars in the dirt parking area. But that was fine though, I just wanted a quiet walk in the woods where I could let the dogs run.

The first couple miles were a steady climb on a well-trodden sandy trail though typical pine forest. Clearly well used by horseback travelers. I let Taylor run off leash from the get-go and popped Parko’s leash a little later. I was warm in shorts and a tee shirt. Near the top of the ridge (Sand Ridge, I assume) we scooted off trail, scrambling around on a couple boulder fields and following game trails (the dogs found plenty of delicious treats thoughtfully left by the wildlife).

Nothing too exciting up there though. Warm sun, a few glimpses at Bootjack Rock to the north, some fall-color larch. The trail appeared to be dipping back down again at the top of the ridge so I made that our turn-around point for the day.