Artist Point an adventure to be enjoyed by the seat of your pants

Use the stick to steer, and brake, I told Emjay, making motions with my own telescoping-hiking pole and acting as if I were some sort of expert on the fine art of that classic Northwest mountain egress technique — the seated glissade.

Some of you experienced backcountry travelers know the drill. The rest of you could learn.

It's basically sledding without the sled. Your cheeks being runners, big rocks are a good thing to avoid. It works best if someone else has gone before you, creating a butt-oggan track you can simply follow. A fairly steep slope is necessary to get up a good amount of speed.

The best glissade (it's French for "frozen cheeks") patches will hurl you downhill for a ways, and then bring you to a nice, gentle stop on a gradually flattened runout.

The worst glissade patches will do the same thing and then send you into a large pile of rocks or, worse, off a cliff. When you get good, you can do it on your feet. (The big-duh disclaimer: Don't try this if you don't know what you're doing, and even then without an ice ax and the knowledge to self-arrest.)

Emjay was game. She planted herself in a worn-out track some glissader had made a day or two before her, just below Artist Point near Mount Baker. She lifted her feet. She dug in the ski pole — a little. And she shot down the mountain like a rock down a tile roof, skimming the surface, flying and whooping like a little kid all the way down.

Beaming, I followed, feeling the old familiar WHUMP as those unexpected patches of ice forced the breath right out of my lungs.

Felt good. It had been too long.

And it would have been longer if not for the fine work of state employees who, every year at this time, provide a true gift to the Northwest: a clear path to Artist Point.

With anywhere from 20 to 40 feet of snow on the ground here at one of the world's snowiest places, it takes about a month to plow the last 2.5 miles of the Mount Baker Highway every summer.

It's time-consuming and sometimes dangerous, but pretty simple: You take a D-9 Caterpillar and start feeling your way along, guessing where the road is, paving the way for a snowblower and large excavator to widen the path behind.

At the summit parking lot, 20 feet of snow remained last week. Some years, it never all goes away. But the parking lot, thanks to veteran snowblowers Chuck Wilkins, Dave Wilson and Bill Joyce, is now clear. It will remain open until the next substantial snowfall, only a few months from now (average: about mid-October).

More stunning places are hard to find. I've said this before: You really shouldn't be able to drive here, to this 5,140-foot spectacle. But you can. And if you're a real Northwesterner, you will, just for a good summertime cheek freeze.

Here's the best thing. The primary rule about glissading is the same as for global warming: Eventually, it all thaws out.

Ron Judd's Trail Mix column appears here every Thursday. To contact him: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com.