Back from the snow? Well I wouldn’t say I was in the snow that much on Stevens Pass because west of Scenic (west portal of the Cascade tunnel) there was none. East of the tunnel there was snow down to Peshastin. Yikes! I hope we have cool summer because there really isn’t anything to keep us wet through the summer.
As it ends up I took one photograph with the trees covered in snow. On Saturday morning an eastbound Z train just happened to be across the pass while it was still cool enough out that the overnight precipitation had fallen as snow and stuck to the trees. Thanks to the light amount of snow I was able to photograph the train at west Berne. Normally this location is so snowed in that getting a photo here would require snow shoes.
The next photograph of an empty grain train shows just what the entire west side of the pass looked like…green. Normally there’s a foot or less at Foss River in January but not this year!
This year Robert, Aaron and spent more time between Leavenworth and the Chumstick tunnel than ever before. There are a few photo locations in the Chumstick and the longer we poke around in there the more we’d like to see. The photo below is a coal car mid-train in an east bound coal empty crossing the Chumstick Highway where the tracks head into the Chumstick tunnel. Definitely there are a few locations here that I’ll visit again.
I’ve posted a few more of my photos on railroadforums.com in a thread containing many photos from the group of us at Tracks in the Snow. There are some great photos in this from many of the group so I encourage everyone to hope over there and take a peek. Ken and Greg caught a couple I particularly like. Hopefully there will be snow next year.
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