October's Blue Sky Vista is Reward for Climbing Mt. Catherine

View from atop Mt. Catherine: That's Granite Mountain to the left, and the Kaleetan and Chair Peaks to the right.

Special to The SunBreak by Mt. Catherine correspondent John Hieger

Back in the '80s, when Blizzard of Oz was the coolest extreme skiing influence on the planet, my friend's snow patrol dad would regal us with stories of the Pass's off-trail downhill couloirs. Mt. Catherine's name often surfaced as the rumored higher step on the Hyak Ski Area expansion. Backcountry wild men had been skiing it for decades and it was just a matter of time before permits cleared and chairlifts went up.

But some 30 years later, Mt. Catherine is as pristine as ever and the only extreme skiers who bag her summit still come the hard way, on foot.

Making the most of the unseasonably blue skies afforded this autumn, I made my way back to Mt. Catherine. It's a modest day hike by Snoqualmie Pass standards that looks down over the Hyak ski area, and features an impressive display of alpine peaks from the typical cast of Snoqualmie Pass big shots that come out with the sun.

Mt. Catherine comes via five solid miles of rocky Forest Road 9070 that winds from the Summit East parking area off Exit 54. Your dying Civic might not make it. Like any hike that's kind of a bitch to get to it gives you a little extra altitude for free. It's a booster seat for your legs while a potential tire-killer for your car.

The trail climbs somewhat steeply for the first mile as Tinkham and Silver Peak (both solid hikes in their own right) rise up to the south and west. Beyond them lies the prohibited watersheds (Bigfoot's hideout) and beyond that a vast network of deforested, logging hellscapes that stretch practically to Tacoma. After a mile of good climbing comes a ridgeline that crawls along the mountain's spine, taking you in a easterly direction before gaining further altitude towards a small, rocky summit that requires a good twenty feet of scrambling up cable before attaining it.

On the day I climbed, a heavy marine layer was fighting its way through the final turn in Snoqualmie Pass before reaching the summit's divide. Stretching back towards Seattle, as far as the eye could see, a heavy blanket of fog kept the suburbs and city folk nestled in their typical grey haze as the real achievers worked for their blue skies somewhere above the 4,000-foot level.

I stood at a vantage point just above the haze as an evil fog clawed its way over the tops of the various ski hills, skeleton-like fingers rolling over the rounded mountaintops, trying to grip the slopes and consume them whole. From above, I watched the vitamin-D-depriving forces that fuel seasonal depression battling with the sunshine and high-pressure systems that rule Kittitas County.

The showdown playing out at the county line between weathers and attitudes couldn't have been any more distinct. But the scene at street level wasn't my concern, as the summit was a postcard of sunshine and changing autumn colors. I ate an apple that matched the red, orange, and yellow color palette displayed in the tough, tiny foliage struggling for a last, desperate foothold on the unforgiving peaks of Catherine and other mountains like her that stand far above the tamed ski slopes and roadways below.