Snow Day

We woke up nice and early- while it was still dark outside, ate some cereal for breakfast and headed out the door around 7 am. The sky sent our adrenaline rushing as we realized it was a clear morning. Not a cloud was to be found, only stars and an inky black sky. As we reached I5, we could see the mountain clear as day. Not a cloud. What a perfect day to go snowboarding! The Mr. and I are picky about our snowboarding days. I don't know if you have ever read the "interests" list on my side bar, but one of them reads "Snowboarding- '1/3 of the enjoyment is the scenery' as a wise man once said." That wise man is my husband, and he is so right. When we go snowboarding, we love two things 1) good snow 2) a clear day and therefore, an amazing view of God's creation. Yesterday didn't let us down.

We arrived at Mt. baker about 10 minutes before the lifts were scheduled to open- at about 8:50 and we were very excited. It took us about an hour and 20 to drive there, and our excitement had been mounting with each hair pin turn. There were hoots and hollers from others in the parking lot, so I knew we weren't the only ones excited about the clear day and the powder that was visible on the hills from the parking lot. As we were getting our gear on, The Mr. all of a sudden fell silent and then with a look of despair on his face told me he forgot his wallet. Now this was a problem. I purposefully had not brought anything but my ID and some lip balm with me. We had a serious problem. The Mr. walked over to the ticket counter as I sat in the truck trying to hide my disappointment and praying that something might happen in order to let us go snowboarding. I watched as he slowly made his way back to the truck and with a funny trying-to-be-serious look said something to the effect "Sorry, you want to just go home now?" I didn't believe him so I freaked out and asked what happened. Believe it or not, about 15 seconds after he walked up to the ticket counter, he ran into a coworker!!! The coworker bought our tickets for us. What an answer to prayer! It is amazing how the Lord understands our day to day needs other than food, water, clothing and shelter. He knew how much we had been looking forward to this day!

There was 11 inches of new snow and I am pretty sure that it was deeper than that in places. When you are snowboarding, this feels like you are riding on a sea of satin, or whipped cream. You glide along making S patterns in the snow that has never before been touched by a human. It is deep, fluffy and mesmerizing. It's so beautiful as the sun hits it and it sparkles like diamonds. Each little ripple and contour is shown by shadows. The neatest feeling is when you are going through the powder and the spray is hitting you in the knees. Your knees start to feel cool! It is also neat to look behind you at the spray coming off the back of your board. Of course you don't want to do this for too long, as there are a lot of trees!

One of the most beautiful parts of the day is watching how the sun changes Mt. Shuksan throughout the day. In the morning, Mt. Shuksan is dark as the sun rises behind it. We got to see the beautiful sunrise and watch as it casts light on all the other mountains around it. At Mt. Baker it is basically a 360° view of mountains. As the sun moves, the way it lights up the mountains and the snowy trees changes and each scene is more beautiful than the last.

The Mr. making first tracks. Only 3 or 4 had been down this trail before us.

My tracks are somewhere in there!

Me!

Mt. Shuksan in the background.

Icicles at the White Salmon day lodge. When it came time for lunch, we had $7 dollars between the two of us, which bought a bowl of salmon chowder and a soda. Good thing we each had a Cliff energy bar with us!

Hikers going out of bounds. This is a famous place to "hike out" and it leads to the photo below, where they ski or board down.

This entire mountain side/cliff and deep ravine is where they are all headed. They hike all along it and every once and and a while you will see a small dark dot at the top of it as a skier or boarder starts their descent. In this photo, there are no tracks, but by the end of the day the area was dotted with them like we had never seen before.

A nice deep track! The snow was perfect.

My trail through the powder. This was almost knee deep!