I had been wanting to do Pilchuck for ever... Driving northbound I-5 from Mountlake Terrace to 405 for the past two years, I had Pilchuck and 3 fingers straight in front of the other gridlocked vehicles. "I wish I could be up there". I took matters into my own hands and requested a day off of work, and called an unsuspecting potential cohort. Dave was recently "between jobs" and I invited him along for some adventure.. "Wanna go on a hike", "Sure", "How does Mt. Pilchuck sound", "Sounds better than sitting at my computer". Picked Dave up at 8:30 and we were in Lake Stevens within a half hour and in Verlot at the Ranger Station by 9:30. What is a Northwest Forest Pass.. I didn't need one of these for Tiger Mt. or Mt Si. Why do I have to fork over $30 buck for one? (Revision: It was worth the purchase for once I found the trail that August, I saw where the money went). I relunctently purchased one because I planned on doing a ton of hiking. Got back into my Truck and proceeded down the Mt. Pilchuck road. 100 feet from the trailhead was 10 foot layer of ice, my truck could of handled it, but the other cars were parked behind it so I did the same. Once one the trailhead, the trail suddenly was snow and we never located it again. I hadn't been up here since '84, and that with my folks.. I have no clue were the trail could be. We followed tracks. The first track lead right (correct), which we followed for a while, but left had more tracks and looked more logical. We backtracked to the creek and then scrambled up this ridge to a old road where we found snow shoe tracks. We followed this and saw a party of 4 going up the north face of the mountain. We followed.. Damn I'm out of shape. It was rough going at a 45-50 degree angle for a hundred feet at a time.. We made it over 3 of these, then Dave sprained his ankle slightly. Dissapointed, but more concerned for Dave, we tried to find an easier way down. We realized 20 minutes later than we were walking on the shore of a frozen lake! We backtracked to the point where he hurt his foot, and just slid down the hills on our butts.. Fun but we got soaked. I didn't want to climb down that log ridden ridge again so we followed the road to the TH. We ended up in a region that was collecting the meltwater. 3-4 inches of water we had to traverse through before we got to ashfault. Got back to my truck pretty wet. We stopped in Granite Falls at the first burger joint we found. The service and food were mediocre at best. Ate, paid and set off for Monroe.. I will conquer this mountain, and conquer it soon I will.