Mailbox Peak (4841 ft)

December 7, 2001

Today the "Dawn Patrol" set it's objective as Mailbox Peak. My "Mountains to Sound" hiking guidebook listed it as 12 miles round trip. This was a pre-work hike and it was winter conditions, so given those factors we weren't setting our sites on the summit today. This trip would just be a for conditioning in the fresh air. Yeah, right!

Alex was busy sawing logs, so it was just Michael and I on this clear, cold morning. We reached the trailhead at 6am and started hiking up the road with our Tikka headlamps blazing. We listened for the sound of a noisy creek as the sign that the trail turn off was nearby. We found the trail and headed off into the forest. The trail was wet in places, but in pretty decent shape otherwise. We followed the winding trail through the darkness with the only sound being our boots. The forest would be asleep for a few hours more.

After about a half mile, the trail started to climb steeply up the hillside. When there were switchbacks, they were pretty short. Ugh! It wasn't much further when we started to see snow alongside the trail. We figured that we would be in snow, so we had our snowshoes with us.

We hiked along in the snow for about a mile, stopping every now and then to make sure that we were still on the trail. We were surprised that the forest was fairly young and free of underbrush. As we got higher the trail disappeared under the snow, but someone had tied orange flags around the trees to mark the trail. We didn't have to break our own trail very long when we broke out of the forest into a sunlit meadow of pristine snow. Clouds had formed down below, but the sun shone brightly on this part of the mountain. We took some pictures and commented on what a great morning this was!

We had heard stories about people getting caught in avalanches on this peak, but so far we hadn't come across any terrain that worried us. After leaving the forest, we traversed right for about 1/4 mile and wound our way around the peak to a ridge that led to what appeared to be the summit ridge. We looked at our watches and saw that it was approaching our planned turn around time, but the summit was right there, and it was a glorious morning......

The ridge leading up to the summit had rocks protruding on the right side so we stuck near these and steadily made our way higher. We could see that a wind slab was starting to form on the left hand side of this slope. We were looking forward to seeing the famous mailbox that marks the summit. A few hundred feet below the top I said to Michael,

"Hey, is that a mailbox or a rock?"

"It's just a rock"

"Darn."

Then as we got closer we could see that it was The Mailbox. It was even on a post! Ha! Michael opened the mailbox to reveal a copy of Dr Seuss's "Green Eggs and Ham", a catalog of mailboxes, and a Magic Eightball! Too funny. We recited some lines from the book and then I picked up the eightball , and shook it: "Will I get in trouble for being late to work?"

"Without a doubt"

We were very impressed with the great views from this peak. To the south was Rainier emerging from the clouds. To the north we could look down on Mt Si with haystack white with snow. To the east was Garfield and farther off was a dominant peak that could only be Mt Stuart. It was a beautiful place, but the wind was making the exposed summit cold so we headed down happy for our decision to continue to the top.

All told, we made it back to the car a little after 11am: 3.5 hours up and 1.5 hours down. As for it being 12 miles, it felt closer to 8. The snow up high did provide us with a more direct descent, which was greatly appreciated by yours truly. Looking forward to next week!