Over a long Memorial weekend Carl, Zach, Rich, Mike and I went to Hood River, OR in search of ski descents off the volcanos there. We started with Mt. St. Helens. The first outing went like this:
Get in the car at 4am. Raining.
Drive to St Helens trailhead. Now 6am.
Still raining.
Start hiking (in the rain).
Once we got above about 4000’ it stopped raining and turned to wind and snow. Thankfully there were occasional windows of almost sunshine. We got to an arbitrary rock of a highpoint and due to the wind, whiteout and firm snow, we turned around at 6200’. We were then pleasantly surprised to get good turns starting around 5000’ and another window of sun to boot. Great fun.
Good learning experience (I took a lot out of my pack afterwards).
Lots of collective motivation to keep everyone moving, and to go try something the next day despite an awful forecast.