Index Bash

I'd been saving up for this one since October; Mount Index the imposing sentinel of the Skykomish Valley. It's an impressive sight from Highway 2. Here's the view from our pre-dawn approach.

In addition to the impressiveness of the objective, this trip require a particularly hardcore route to the summit. It started with a six-mile mountain bike. Here's what that looked like.

After that there was a three-mile stretch on an abandoned logging road. It was more like a jungle bushwhack with plenty of washouts to boot. See for yourself. Yes Brandon and Chris are in this picture. From there it was up onto the alpine slopes where the snow was deep, the skies blue, and the views incredible. The one downer on the trip were the avalanche chutes blocking all routes to the actual summit. But it's hard to complain when we got in 20 miles with 4,500 feet of elevation gain and a whole lot of awesome terrain.