After a slight miscalculation on the right exit to get from the I-5 to the I-90 we were on our way east of Seattle to Snoqualmie Pass for some skiing. (Well it did allow us to take in some more sights of Downtown Seattle. 🙂
This is the way to get to a ski field – on a 6 lane freeway at 110 kph for an hour – wish Australian Ski Fields were like this.
Taking the exit off the freeway through 5 metre snow banks was amazing given that the ski season is about over here. Back home we would kill to have conditions like this at peak times.
Driving through Snoqualmie East, we were wondering if the resort was actually open today. We arrived at Snoqualmie Central and saw a couple of lifts operating, not very many people on the slopes and a virtually empty carpark.
Because the conditions were not ideal with fog and light rain, it must have scared the locals off. After getting skis and lift tickets we proceeded onto our “private” ski mountain. There were probably only 200 people on the mountain, if that.
The snow was certainly different to Aussie snow, even with the rain, it was not slushy and was fast. There were a couple of exceptions near the edges of the runs which hadn’t been groomed and were a couple of metres deep. Rachael found out the hard way of the consequences of skiing this stuff with a couple of face plants. The snow was soft so no damage was done.
We persisted until closing at 4pm, by which time we were fully saturated but had had a good day out. Cranked up the car (Ford Edge – similar to the Ford Territory in Australia) to 28C including the heated seats and we were on our way home through some heavy fog and rain.
I even attempted to find a geocache but it was under 5m of snow so wasn’t going to happen.
A quick stop at REI for the second time to grab some waterproofing stuff and a US/AUS Power Plug Adapter (had a win on the waterproofing but not the plug) then headed back to the University Motel Suites to dry off.
Tomorrow we are off to Everett for the Boeing Factory Tour and it is a “12 of 12” day as well.
