So as I'd predicted the previous night, I had camped very close to the turnoff to the Brewer Creek trailhead. I did wake up a bit later than hoped - missed the first morning rays of sun on the mountain, could have made a good shot, as it was still just "sparely" cloudy.
But I got to the trailhead early enough to claim the last obvious parking spot - lots of other skiers and a few climbers heading up the trail as I got there, and more behind me had to get creative finding spots to leave their cars. The skiers carried the long wide skis, (not sure what they're called) not the narrow nordic skis. The climbers were loaded down with ropes. All seemed to have waterproof pants & large full packs. I "self-registered" a wilderness permit stating "just a morning stroll", and put on my waterproof shoes and microspikes and gaiters over my normal hiking pants and a nylon shirt, my backpack with water and a few snacks and windbreaker and hoodie, and my camera. The trail started out mostly the soft ash with some patches of snow, and got progressively more snow, and wetter ash (which behaved like quicksand.) A few mostly dry gullies from recent snow melt flows.
The snow was still hard enough in the early morning to make my going easy (no "post-holing".) The "tree line" turned out to be rather nebulous, gradually reducing in size and clumpiness, and I just kept on going further, getting clear views of what clearly was blue-green glacier ice, I think part of the Hotlum glacier. Quite expansive views of the topography to the north and northeast - the view east was of an undulating ridge-arm of the mountain. It was starting to get cloudier, obscuring the top of the mountain in gigantic plumes of cloud. So I turned around after having my fill of photoops. On the way down, I continued to encounter skiers making their way up, one group of about a dozen skiers. I saw some ski tracks, but none actually skiing. I also saw two groups of "base-camp" tents presumably of climbers far above me.
Got back to the car, continued around the drive northwestward on Road 19, the Military Pass Road, to highway 97 to Weed, stopping a few dozen times for snapshots of the mountain, now about half obscured by clouds. Poked around Weed briefly finding little of interest.
The forecast called for increasing chance of rain tonight and tomorrow, with snow level around 6500 ft, so I decided to head for the 7000ft PCT-road-crossing near Mt Eddy, on the Parks Creek Road above Stewart Springs road, northwest of Weed. From Weed, snow could be seen on the tips of the mountain range looming to the west, which I assumed included Mt Eddy. I hoped to wake up to fresh snow in the morning, but though I'd have a chance to take a hike along the PCT to the Deadfall Lakes at the base of Mt Eddy, to see what the snow situation might be for me a week or two from now - could I be hiking this "early" for a normal year?
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