Started this thread more out of frustration that the past three years have been the same, forecast looks good a week out and then goes to crap.
Was genuinely curious to hear about someone who did it x number of years ago and they had great weather.
I'm happy we went ahead and did the ride 2 years ago and am happy I managed to finish the whole thing on limited training hours and had dressed appropriately for a cold/wet descent off the Johnston ridge. The GF and I managed to have a good time despite the marginal weather. We only got rained on for 2-3 hours but that included the descents.
I heard last year there were folks nearly hypothermic recovering in vans and ambulances, luckily we avoided that. The temps didn't look that bad for this past Saturday but since I'm not currently training for anything bigger I'm not super excited about shelling out the cash for the ride and half a tank of gas to go suffer for 5-6 hours and then have to come home and clean up all my gear. I used to be more core when I was younger but these days I would like to have fun on a recreational ride.
I figured the scheduling had something to do with avoiding the heavier tourist weekends in summer but I think if we are going to do this ride again we’ll come down on a weekday in late summer and do it on our own. We typically go down to Rainier and do a ride or two on a weekday every summer and the roads are usually very low traffic-wise and I assume it would be similar for this.
It’s always good to be prepared for crappy weather around here but it’s hard to be too critical of folks who are a little overly optimistic when it comes to predicting weather. I’ve been climbing in the Cascades for a while now off and on and people will look for the slightest sliver of hope that their planned climb will go. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you end up spending 2 or more days hiking in the rain.