Hw. 20 is Open

The gates are open. It's 46 degrees at Washington Pass and cloudy. The forecast says it's going to get up as high as 70 in the Methow Valley. There's also an increasing chance for rain (60% tonight/tomorrow), but the freezing level is supposed to stay way up (6,000 ft.)

Bare and dry pavement (okay - there's some wet spots from melting snow), right now.

Enjoy your trip!

Jeff Adamson

Thats right Hw. 20 is now open, as usual I drove across after the gate opened. At Washington Pass the road was lined with walls of snow 10ft high; significantly less than last years opening. Just below Washington Pass a small slide came down that was being cleared as I wen't through. The road was clear all the way to Winthrop. The weather was nice and warm all across the mountain passes.

We Tried a Spring Trip

This years "Spring Trip" was a little different from what we are used to. Because of a late winter storm in the North Cascades we were forced to improvise with our plans. The original plan was to hike from Ruby Arm to Spencer Island, we soon learned that Hw. 20 would not be open early enough to grant us accesses to the trail head. So we came up with plan B; hike from the other end of the lake to Silver Cr. However when the winter storm hit the snow levels around the Cascades dropped below 500ft. Because much of the rout to Ross Lake is above 2000ft we were forced to once again change our plan of attack. We were running out of options and canceling the trip was out of the question. So we talked to a friend who owns a cabin outside of Deming, WA to see if it would be available for us to use. As it turns out the cabin was open and available for us to use. We decided to go with this plan and come up with ideas for a latter trip to redeem the season.