April may be the cruelest month, but since May started things have been looking up.
That’s because on May 1 the Hurricane Ridge Road opened to traffic 24 hours a day.
All 17 uphill miles of it, weather permitting.
And so far the weather has permitted.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Cary Ligon, 35, of Port Angeles said Wednesday, standing in a glaring snowfield beneath clear skies.
It was his second visit to the summit since the start of May.
Cole, Ligon’s five-year-old son, has a favorite activity that needs no explanation.
When asked what he likes to do in the sun and snow, he flashed a mischievous smile, palmed a quick snowball and chucked it at his dad.
Despite the warmth that May has delivered, snow remains stuck to the peaks and wedged in the valleys, thick as frosting.
But it won’t be there forever.
And though the cruelty of April may be over, some will not soon forget the unrequited longing felt in their snowboard bindings.
Consider Alec Lyrae, 26, and Leslie Hamilton, 23, both of Port Angeles who made the climb to the ridge Wednesday afternoon with no less than two snowboards, a metal disk and a pair of snowshoes.
“I’ve been biting my lip all winter,” Lyrae said in the visitor’s center parking lot, noting that his work schedule conflicts with the ridge road’s weekday winter closures.
“We came up to play,” Lyrae said with a smile before he and Hamilton hiked up a hill.
Cliques of deer line the roads like bored teenagers.
Motorists slow down to take pictures and make crude, deer-like noises, as if they knew the slang.