We had a soggy but fun weekend. In true Pacific Northwest style, our Memorial Day weekend included a lot of rain and snow. So much for barbeques, beaches and swimming!

Robin had set up a training weekend down in Oregon. After work on Friday Eric and I swung by Robin's house, loaded his gear in the Rover and then drove to Seatac to pick up Jodie, who flew in from Salt Lake City. We would be joined by Shannon the next morning. The four of us spent the night at Scott's(who by the way summitted Mt. Everest last year!), and woke early the next morning for our ropes lesson at Lewis and Clark State Park. We met our instructor around 8:30 and hiked up to the rock face where we'd be ascending and rappeling. Unfortunately with six of us we really only got in one turn on the ropes each. That's OK though, most of all I wanted to learn rapelling with a figure 8 and a shunt- it was much easier than using an ATC. I think now I'll be pretty comfortable with whatever the Raid organizers throw at us in Idaho. Ascending was suprisingly easy to do but it sure wore out my forearms! You can see some pictures here.After the lesson and lunch we started our drive up to Mt. Adams in search of a campsite for the night. After the tents were set up Scott, Shannon and Robin went off for a mountain bike ride while Jodie and I built an awesome fire. This was quite a feat because everything was sopping wet from the steady rainfall. Kudos to us!

On Saturday morning we packed up our gear for the Mt. Adams climb. Our packs were pretty full as we carried crampons, ice axes and snowshoes in addition to food, water and extra clothing. We had to hike a few miles up the road just to get to the trailhead; low snow levels had left the main road impassable. By the time we hit the trailhead we were pretty much soaked! Ugh. We put on the snowhoes just a little while later and that make trekking through the snow so much easier. Much to our suprise the sun even paid us a short visit (just long enough to give us a sunburn), then made a hasty retreat behind snow-laden clouds. The snow was falling hard enough to cause some safety concerns, so we turned back after a few hours. By the time we reached camp all we could think about was hot food and a hot shower, neither of which we could get at our primitive campsite. So...we cleaned up as best we could, found a great Mexican restaurant for dinner, and then rode our bikes for a couple hours. That night we crashed at Scott's house again because no one wanted to sleep in a cold, wet tent. We stayed up pretty late yakking, looking at Scott's Everest pictures, and trying to figure out exactly how many Longaberger baskets were in his house (like 200??). This morning we slept in, had a great breakfast and drove back up to Seattle.

Yeah, the weather was crummy but we made the best of it and had a great time. I think next year's Memorial Day outing should be in Moab though!

We hardly took any pictures because our camera battery only had like 8 minutes left on it :( Click here to see them.