May 16, 2018, Pilchuck, good snow, long road, pollen

Hollywood, PJ and I left town late (10:00 am) for the annual trek to the mighty Mt Pilchuck.  The road is gated at Heather Lake, and in fact, there are large concrete barricades and boulders shoved in front of the gate, so I won't speculate on what the plan is, but it may be that any ski trip to this worthy destination will require walking or biking the road, which has obviously cut way down on the use of the State Park.  We biked up the road, which appeared to be in normal fine shape (except a few fallen trees blocking) and hit snow about 1/2 mile from the end.  1.5 hours. Snow at the base going fast, but moving up, seemed like more snow than I am used to here, and you'd think it would be good for some weeks depending on your tolerance for a little dirt-walking at the start.  Surface better consolidated than expected given the temps and skiing was good, EXCEPT, that is, for the pollen which was some of the worst I've seem.  Used GooGone to clean it off, but that did not last very many turns.  No pollen up high, but as soon as you get near the trees....

Skied the SE Chute which was very nice, EXCEPT that PJ let his own hissing, slow wet "personal avalanch" catch up to him and it knocked him down when he skied across the toe of it.  That got his attention.  Everyone survived.

One other note: A friendly guy we met at the parking lot had biked up and camped near the TH, and while hiking someone had stolen his bike stashed in the bushes and ridden it all the way down, and then left it there at the bottom for him. We locked our bikes and hid them well.