According to the Washington State Department of Transportation, “Over the past five-year period, Snoqualmie Pass received an average annual snowfall of 457 inches per year”. As of December 2nd the pass has received 44 inches of snow this winter season. With more snow comes more threats of road closures and hazardous road conditions. But, it also meant the start of the snowboarding season at The Summit at Snoqulamie West this weekend! Less than an hour away from our home in Seattle this ski/snowboard resort offers a wide array of snowboarding opportunities. With 18 different routes in a variety of difficulties it proved…
Snowshoeing the Snow Lake Summer Trail
Saturday, December 1st proved to be a glorious day. With a threat of storms beginning in the evening and continuing on into Sunday we headed out midday for our weekly adventure in the Cascade Mountains. Bobby and I have been anxiously waiting to try out the new Tubbs Snowshoes we purchased in September from www.backcountry.com This is a great site for purchasing outdoor gear at a low cost. The snowshoes can also be found on Amazon. We decided that it would be best to try an easy and shorter trail for this first outing considering I haven’t snowshoed since the winter of 2008…
Vantage Camping and Climbing
September is one of the most popular months to venture to Vantage for some of the best climbing in Washington. We set off on Saturday morning with our friends Paul and Marie and their Portuguese Water Dog, Beth. The car was crammed with climbing and camping gear, dogs, and people. Our Yakima Rocketbox had been given it’s place of honor atop the roof and was filled to capacity. Vantage is a little bit more than a two hour drive from Seattle, but it’s easy to get to, just head east on 90! The eastern side of the Cascades is far…
Sun Mountain Resort, WA Day 2
We arose after more then 12 hours of glorious sleep to a beautiful sunny morning atop a mountain! We went to the dinning room for breakfast, the service was so speedy that we had time to kill before our 9:30am spa appointment. We headed to the game room and, choosing between pool, foosball, and ping pong, we opted for a few rounds of ping pong. After I royally slaughtered Bobby in both rounds we headed to the second floor, directly above the lobby area to the spa. We were early still but they immediately greeted us and, after filling out…
Sun Mountain Resort, WA Day 1
As Labor Day weekend approached Bobby and I put our heads together to come up with a fabulous weekend getaway. As often happens, we both wanted opposite things out of the weekend. I wanted to stay in a hotel and spend the weekend relaxing by the side of a pool and getting pampered in a spa. Bobby wanted to go backpacking. Don’t get me wrong, I love backpacking and hiking and all of the outdoor recreation we have thrown ourselves into since arriving in Washington, but, I occasionally need a break from that. As is our habit we compromised. Bobby…
Green River and Goat Mountain
We found our first backpacking route using Craig Romano’s informative guidebook, “Backpacking Washington”. We chose the Green River and Goat Mountain trail. We knew it would be difficult at 20 miles and 3500 feet in elevation gain but we hoped that the views would outweigh the weight of our packs. The hike is located in the southern Cascades surrounding Mount Saint Helens. Part of our hike actually took us through sections of the blast zone from the 1980 Mount Saint Helen’s volcanic eruption. Thirty years had done a lot for the area and it was difficult to tell whether we…
Mount Washington
Mount Washington was our first attempt at summiting a peak in the Cascades. It also proved to be our first successful summit! On the seventh of July, 2012 we summited Mount Washington (4,420 feet). This hike was extremely private, we only passed three or four other groups. This may have had something to do with our very early start. We were done hiking the 8.5 miles with more than 3,000 feet in elevation gain by 1:00 p.m. The Mount Washington hike featured on the WTA website has you stop 2 miles in at a viewpoint. We continued to the summit…
Lake 22
At 6.25 miles and 1350 feet in elevation gain, Lake 22 seemed a beautiful first hike with more than 1,000 feet in elevation gain for us to attempt. We were joined on this incredibly picturesque hike by our friends, Jason and Stacy. The turnaround point is the climax of the hike, a little more than 2 miles in, where you are greeted by an unbelievable natural wonder. The beautiful Lake 22 sits before you as Mount Pilchuck’s north face surrounds 2/3 of the water. When we went, there was still snow covering up the 1.2 mile trail that circumnavigates the…
Otter and Big Creek Falls – Taylor River Hike
We moved to washington just a few weeks ago and were eager to go on our first outdoor excursion. Using the Washington Trails Association (WTA) website for the first time we found the Otter and Big Creek Falls – Taylor River hike. At 10 miles it was one of the longest hikes we had ever attempted but, it only had 650 feet of elevation gain. We set off with the hope that this would be an easy introduction to hiking! Despite the constant and unpleasant drizzle that continued throughout the day we made it through the hike without any problem!…
Relocating to Seattle for Amazon
Update 2017: This post gets a lot of love from Google from people considering taking a job at Amazon in Seattle. This post is almost 5 years old now so I figured I owe all of you an update on how things are going. Hopefully I can also answer a lot of the questions people typically have when they’re making the decision. First off, I’m about to hit my 5 year anniversary at Amazon. Before Amazon I had never worked anywhere for more than 2 years before getting bored and wanting to move on. That speaks highly to the diversity of projects and great…