Dognapping 5.19.08

Earlier this week I went for a quick afterwork hike. Mike was still up in Holden and Sarah was too tired from the puppy party at her house the day before so she let me steal Nollie. (Note: I forgot my camera, so here's an overexposed stock photo of Nollie.)

Went to the Twin Falls trailhead near exit 34 in North Bend and hit the trail around 6:45. With the quick warm-up we had last weekend, the snowmelt has swollen the rivers a ton. The falls were raging and super loud. I was suprised that Nollie didn't get too freaked out on the 40 foot high bridge over the falls. Headed past the falls up to the John Wayne/Ironhorse/Pioneer/etc. trail and explored a bit off-trail. There was still just enough light to get back to the truck without using a flashlight at 9:15.

Most people who read this know that Nollie can be kind of a spaz, but i was pretty impressed with her on this hike. She was on leash the whole time and whenever she felt the leash get tight she would slow down a bit. Probably helps that there wasn't any other people or dogs around.

5.17.08 hike & shred

ok, so linsday and i got up sorta early on saturday to head up to snoqualmie pass for an AM hike and some afternoon shredding at alpental. due to the abundance of snow this season, we figured we'd have to go pretty far east of the pass to find some trails that weren't still covered with snow. we wound up driving out to Easton (70 miles east of seattle) and hiking a portion of the Easton Ridge trail towards Mt. Baldy. we hit the 'trail' around 10am and wandered around near a creek/stream for a while before getting to the real trail head. there wasn't too much snow on the lower elev. portions of the trail, we only saw one other person (for about 5 sec), and it was about 75 to 80 degrees out. the birds were going nuts up there and we saw a few hawks soaring, tons of songbirds, and even a humming bird. the snow got pretty thick at the top of the ridge and we tried to follow the buried trail for a while before giving up and resting at a scenic spot to rehydrate and play with the binoculars. we turned back to the truck around 12:30 and hoofed it back so we could get and hour or so of shredding in. on the way back we heard some pretty loud grunting that must have been an elk. i'm not a scat expert yet, but man, there were turds all over that trail. next time i promise some pics.

part two, we made it back to the truck with no problem and headed west to the ski hill. got to the parking lot around 1:45, changed, and hit the lifts. by the time we got there it was pretty obvious that at least half the people up there were drunk and a bunch of bozos were too tough to ski/shred with shirts on. witnessed most of them fall at least once while riding the chair, 'how's that strawberry feel brah?' anyways, we took a few runs up on chair 2 at alpental and the views were amazing (see 6th pic)! the snow was super slushy and fun too, even though our legs were pretty tired. blah blah blah, we went to north bend and ate NACHOS!!!

hiking pics:









snowboarding pics:




NACHOS

halfpipe parteee 5.15.08

nels, hoen, michelle, and myself drove up to snoqualmie pass after work this thursday. the hill is closed but we hiked up to the pipe, sculpted out a couple hits and sessioned it for a while. there were some other dudes up there riding some of the other melting features in the park too. serious dork sessions. here are some pics. unfortunately the pipe is in the shade in the evening so the pics are sorta dark. we rode for a couple hours and nobody got hurt. no nachos, no corndogs, but i did get a burrito on the way home!

sucky blog, i know

i've been snowboarding 5 times since my last post. i'm lazy, sorry. a barrage of pics to come soon....

p.s. i'm going hiking and shreding w/lindsay tomorrow and probably snowboarding somewhere on sunday. the elusive 60 day mark is within reach...

stop pooping in our washing machine!

today i rescued a baby squirrel that was crying in our washing machine. oh, i went snowboarding with mike today too.

snomoboarding 4.30.08

nels and i went owmoboarding wednesday after work. we hit the trail around 5:30 pm and made it to the snowboard spot around 6:10. it was a little tricky getting there but we did pretty well. it's about 5 miles from where we parked the truck to where we went snowboarding. the previous night about 7 inches of new snow had fallen. it's friggin' may and we're still getting snow out here! they stopped grooming the snowmobile trails about a month ago, so the road was pretty bumpy/whoopty.

so with two dudes and one sled you've got 2 options as to how you ride the snow machine:

1) tandem: one person per side and you steer as a team (one person on throttle and the other on the brake). this kinda freaks me out with each new person that i tandem with, but by the end of the day you get a pretty comfortable with it. helmets are mandatory so you don't get clobbered in the skull with the other person's snowboard that is vertical on a backpack (see photo).

2) homo-biling (aka nuts to butts): sitting one behind another. this sucks when you've got 2 backpacks and snowboards. also, steering a snowmobile is 90% shifiting your weight which is pretty much impossible when riding like this. this is how we rode before we knew any better.

ok, so we got to the snowboard spot and the light was super flat and a storm was rolling in. we took a couple snowboard runs and dorked around on the sled. i managed to get the sled stuck a few times in the deep new snow. due to the crappy visibility and the storm we decided to head back early, just in case. it was a short trip but still pretty fun and we didn't see anybody else out there. it was snowing hard when we started back to the truck and it was raining back at the parking lot. got nachos in north bend. whoot.

more shredding tomorrow.