And - oh yeah - I watched in disbelief as the American electorate shook off the cobwebs of the past eight years and changed the course of our national history.
Despite all that, I seem to find inspiration only from the mountains. So in keeping with the original intent of this digital rag, I'll return to documenting our mini-adventures from our Portland home base.
Kristin and I spent the last weekend in Mt. Rainier National Park looking for buttery turns and majestic views. Over the next month, I'll be out of town for both Valentine's Day and Kristin's birthday in addition to one or two other weekends. Nice huh? She asked for a weekend getaway, and I kindly obliged by planning a romantic weekend in the Tower Suite at
Alexander's.
Alexander's is a turn of the century lodge only minutes from the entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park in Ashford, Washington. The Tower Suite occupies the top two floors of the castle-style turret and offers beautiful views of surrounding hills and Douglas Fir forests. The friendly waitstaff serves complimentary breakfast in a warm dining room with the juncos and jays eating a breakfast of their own at the feeders outside. The Inn provided a very luxurious and relatively affordable getaway for the weekend - highly recommended.
The snow gods must be living an unbalanced lifestyle lately, because they binged in December and since then have dried up and been back on the wagon. I'd heard rumors of mid-winter spring-like conditions in the mountains, and the weather looked stable, so we went hunting for corn.
The first day we planned a trip to the Paradise Glacier, which is about 3-4 miles from Paradise Inn towards the Cowlitz Rocks.
Rainier looked great on a stable, sunny morning.
We started skinning up Mazama Ridge, and the views got better and better.
From near the top of the ridge, we got great views of Little Tahoma.
From there, we headed onto the Paradise snowfield and glacier in search of the turns.
We found sweet, spring-like turns with beautiful views and relative solitude. A great day!
We've been kind of sedentary lately, so we were whooped after Day 1 and decided on a slightly shorter Day 2. We planned on the Golden Gate Bowls, which offered 4-500 vertical feet of goodness only a mile or so from Paradise.
We were treated to more amazing views of the Tatoosh on the approach.
And the promise of nice lines kept us moving.
The conditions weren't nearly as good on Sunday. The temperatures never warmed up as much, and the snow stayed fairly firm. Weather started to move in during the afternoon and prevented the corn from sweetening up, but we still got in some fast turns on hard snow - well worth the trip.
More inspiration from the weekend.
