Plummer Peak,  Mt Rainier National Park,  October 17, 2010     page 4 / 21

Earlier in the week, western Washington had received heavy rain, saturating the soil. It was evident that the nightly low temperature was reaching freezing. In many places along the trail, the moisture had frozen and expanded right out of the soil into long strands of ice. Libby and I have seen this sort of thing several times. In many places, the ice strands were nearly three inches long.