New toy in the Rain

One of my rare gadget-purchases arrived on Monday. Its a Delorma Earthmate PN-20 handheld GPS reciever. (review here) It's on the high end of the market, (although I didn't pay quite as much as the price they list) but it holds a bunch of detailed topo maps, satellite views, has a color screen, does automatic routing for navigating on roads, etc. In short, the perfect thing for a cross-country hiking/driving adventure (and certainly useful down the road, too). So, despite some slightly bleak looking weather, my dad and I took an after dinner hike up Mt. Pilchuck.

Rain and fog brings out a nice character of the lower elevations of the cascades: its an almost ethereal beauty.

Mt Pilchuck is a 5300' peak that takes less than 45 minutes to drive to the trailhead. The hike itself is a bit over 3 miles one way, with about 2500' vertical climb. So pretty easy. We hammered our way up in not much more than an hour. However, the bleak conditions meant that it was a completely socked in (with clouds), somewhat drippy hike. As miserable as that sounds, it was actually warm enough that I did it in short sleeves, and it the slight misting rain felt really good. Whereas on a clear day you have a vista of the entire Puget Sound region, we had a nice view of the insides of a cloud. But it was a successful exercise to play with the GPS. (which I really enjoy, by the way.)