Mt. Aix

Aaron and I did a day hike in the Cascades before heading to the Tri-Cities for Olszta's wedding. Like many of our trips to the woods, this one began with a petty dispute. The weighty subject of the argument was where we should get grub on the drive from SeaTac to the mountains. We had put some of the rancor behind us two hours later when we were making camp in the Wenatchee National Forest about 22 miles east of Rainier, near the head of the trail that leads to Mt. Aix's summit. Aaron made a fire while I pitched the tent. It was a clear night. We drank Mirror Pond Pale Ale and marveled over the luminosity of the Milky Way above us.

The next morning I made coffee by boiling water with my new MSR Whisper Lite stove. To each cup of water I added two heaping scoops of Folger's instant coffee, which was about three times the recommended amount. The result was a chemical sludge that was repellently strong until you drank a half cup, by which time your taste buds had become desensitized from exposure.

Galvanized by the Folger's, we set off for Aix's summit at 6:40 a.m. The trail heads east and south up the Nelson Ridge via a series of switchbacks. Once we got half way up the ridge, we had tremendous views of massive Mt. Rainier to the west. I could make out the main features of the route Luke and I had taken when we climbed Rainier two months earlier.

From the top of Nelson Ridge, the trail heads south to Aix's summit ridge. On the west side of the summit ridge, the trail forks. The left fork climbs up a scree field directly to the summit. The right fork contours around to the southern end of the summit ridge. We took the right fork because it was more challenging. We climbed between gendarmes on the south face to reach the top of the summit ridge. After we traversed a Class 3 ledge that was exposed to a good sized fall, Aaron commented, "This is pretty hairy." I answered, "Yeah, but it's fun too."

We topped off on the summit a couple hundred feet after the ledge. The summit gave up an inspiring view of Rainier to the west. Mt. Adams dominated the southern horizon. Smoke from a forest fire was spreading out east and west across the valley south of Aix. Mt. St. Helens was faintly visible to the southwest.

We climbed down the scree field because it was more direct than retracing our path back to the southern end of the summit ridge. The scree field was steep and the rocks flowed each time you put your foot down. During the descent on Nelson Ridge, Aaron complained that he was tired, out of shape, and his feet hurt. I asked if he couldn't just accept that discomfort was an inescapable part of experiencing the woods and mountains. His accepting pain wasn't the issue, though. The issue was my accepting his complaints about pain.

After we finished the hike, we drove through the Wenatchee National Forest on Highway 410. The delicate green leaves of a tree on the banks of a mountain stream were shimmering in the wind and glowing with the sun's golden light.