2nd Time is the Charm

Last year I became a real blog post slacker. This year I am trying to do better but actually doing even worse! I always want to post about the fun stuff I do right after it happens, but then I get caught up in everything else and forget about it until I sit down at the computer with some free time. By then I usually have a hard time remembering what I wanted to post about. Guess I need to start posting from a fancy mobile device with speech recognition. Then I could do the post while driving home from a weekend adventure!

Anyway . . . The subject of this post is my second trip to Cal's cabin this winter. I am truly blessed to have been able to visit the cabin twice this winter. And both times I had a blast! The first time the snow was fresh and gnarly. The second time the weather was awesome and the food was exceptional. Of course the company on both trips was superb.

On the weekend of Feb. 16-17 I visited the cabin for part of the holiday weekend and hung out with Calvin, Kristen, Belinda, Bruce and Kat. They all were smart enough to plan for a three day trip. Whereas I had to be back to work on monday, so missed a 3rd glorious day:( Belinda, Bruce and Kat were friends of Cal and Kristen's from Mt. Vernon.

I skied in by myself on Saturday, got the cabin setup, and skied up the hill north/east of Little Boulder Creek. Although the snow had a pretty nasty wind/freeze crust the sky was virtually cloud free and the daytime temperature must have been near 50 degrees. I had a great time skinning up the hill, following animal tracks, and checking out the views of the valley. At the top I had a great view toward the Mt. Cashmere and Mt. Stuart area but couldn't pick out any known peaks in that direction. Guess I wasn't high enough! I could see Mt. Daniel further up the valley and another peak, Granite or Trico (?), with sled high-marks on a damn near 40 degree slope. I find it slightly comforting to know that natural selection is still at work in the human population! I skied back down to the cabin, trying to stay off of the most wind-laden avalanche prone slopes.

Everyone else finally made it to the cabin, just in time for a great dinner prepared by Calvin and Kristen. Afterwards the wine and conversation flowed freely. Unfortunately for me I had brought enough alcohol for two nights instead of one. So I ended up drinking too much and belligerently arguing social science, conservation and land use with Kat, Belinda and Kristen (three conservation professionals). At least Kristen and Calvin are used to my penchant to play devils advocate. But I am certain I put on a sorry and somewhat scary show for poor Kat, Belinda, and Bruce. I hope they had as much fun as I did!

Sunday dawned just as clear and glorious as Saturday. But my hangover tempered my enjoyment of the beautiful morning. Thank goodness everyone else seemed to be in no hurry to hit the slopes. We spent the entire morning and part of the afternoon just eating, napping, talking, reading and playing card games. Around 2 pm when we were getting ready to do some xc shred'n the cabin just started shaking violently for about 5-10 seconds. I had just enough time to wonder: is this an earthquake and what should I do, before the shaking ceased. We looked outside to find that the entire roof snow load had split and slid off the roof leaving huge snow slabs on two sides of the cabin. This was a new one for me, and I think everyone else involved. It am sure glad I wasn't standing outside below the roof overhang, taking a leak when the roof decided to let loose!

All of us except for Kristen went on a little ski trip down in the valley. We toured around the Cle Elum River, checked out some frozen ice by the river, followed a bearprint trail, met some people at a cool yurt and enjoyed the sunshine. By the time we returned it was time for me to leave. So I packed up and had a relatively uneventful but very serene nighttime ski out to the car.

Thanks to my friends Cal and Kristen for organizing such a fun weekend. I had a fabulous time meeting Belinda, Bruce and Kat and enjoying the cabin, once again.

Keep on Digging

According to some people, too much snow can be a bad thing, and it nearly was for our planned trip into the mountains last weekend. Fortunately, the highways opened just in time and the people who went on the trip were a hardy group, willing to literally crawl on hands and knees to get to my friend Calvin's cabin. This year the group consisted of Lena, Aaron, Chris, Cindy and I; a big improvement over last year's group: me, myself and I. Personally I had a blast going to the cabin and getting to hang out with some great people. The icing on the cake was taking a few downhill runs through near bottomless powder on the slopes near the cabin!

This year's trip definitely required some work though, especially for those on skinny skis. Both Lena and Chris were reduced to postholeing and crawling through waist high powder for the 1/4 mile between the cabin and the snowmobile track. Lena made it to the cabin but only after an hour of crawling up the hill. Fortunately ultra-man Chris was too tough to give up and hand over his pack to me or Cindy (it looked like he brought the kitchen sink!). Cindy didn't exactly have it easy on her skinny skis either. Once we were at the cabin, Aaron and I had to do quite a bit of digging in order to get to the well and the outhouse. At one point I was virtually swimming mid-chest high through powder trying to get to the cabin front door. I have never seen so much snow at the cabin!

The trip almost became a bust even before it started, since Snoqualmie pass had been closed for several days due to high avalanche danger. On the morning of our trip, only a couple of hours before we were to drive over the pass, WSDOT opened the pass to vehicular traffic. Chris and Cindy actually ended up getting detoured around the pass when returning home on Sunday, still due to avalanche danger. I wonder when WSDOT is going to learn how to keep highways open during the winter. Maybe they should get some lessons in mountain highway design and avalanche control from Colorado or Utah?

Thanks to everyone's back-breaking labor getting to the cabin, we had enough food for several days, even though we were only there for two. So a good portion of the trip was spent eating up all the food and hanging out in the warm cabin; just what the cabin was meant for. On Saturday afternoon and Sunday mid-day Aaron and I made a few trips up the hill behind the cabin and skied down through knee high powder.

Like usual, the trip was far too short and we all skied out on Super Bowl sunday, in order to get back to civ before monday. An added bonus was that very few sledders were on the trails for the whole weekend. I'm guessing the pass closure and Super Bowl kept most of the sledders away. So the ski back was relatively quiet. Just the way it should be in a snowy winter wonderland.