What started last week as a light dusting of snow has turned into a full week of actual winter in the PNW, with even more snow forecast to come over the next week. Overnight between Friday and Saturday, the Seattle area saw more snow than we typically get over the course of an entire year! While some are starting to tire of all the snow, I’m loving it! When I moved to Washington with my family as a child, I imagined that we were leaving behind the eternal summer of California for Great White North, where there’d be snow for three months out of every year. Our first winter in Washington was a snowy one - not the three months I’d imagined, but enough that we had an extended winter break with school cancelled for multiple days. I loved every minute of it, with sledding, snowball fights, and cocoa to warm up inside while our soggy winter clothes dried. Sadly, while we had a light snow most winters, that memorable snowstorm in 1996 was a rare event, and since I’ve had to head east for adventures in the snow.
Read moreLife: Week 5
With warm temperatures, sunshine, and the smell of late winter flowers dominating the last days of January, I had given up hope of seeing any lowland snow this winter. Naturally, this meant that just a few days into February, temperatures plummeted and a snowy wonderland descended on the Seattle area! I couldn’t have been more surprised, or delighted, as fat, soggy flakes began to fall on Sunday afternoon. Andy and I were out for a late lunch at Bellevue Brewing when the snow arrived, and the few people not at home watching the Super Bowl all clustered at the windows, phones in hand to document the snow. Happily, we made it home early enough for me to dash out to the Powerline Trail, meeting a friend and her family for a slow ramble through the transformed landscape. After such a warm, sunny winter so far, it’s such a relief to finally get a little snow!
Read moreLife: Week 4
It’s always tough to leave behind the hush and relaxation of the snow-covered cabin to return to the real world, and after taking Monday off, I returned to a hectic four day work week. Typically, January is a fairly slow time for me at work, allowing me some much needed time to catch up on all the lower priority but still necessary tasks that pile up during the busy season leading up to the holidays. Not so this year! After a brief window of downtime between Christmas and New Year’s, work has been one scramble after another. Andy has continued to be even busier than me, working both late nights and weekends. This weekend, feeling a little under the weather (or possibly just completely worn down from all the overtime he’s been working) Andy actually took both Saturday and Sunday off and we enjoyed a much needed lazy weekend at home. We didn’t spend the entire weekend on the couch though - Saturday night, we had a luxuriously decadent dinner at Cafe Juanita for no special reason. We took our time over our several courses, and were amazed to find they even had a lactose-free dessert item in addition to their seasonal sorbet options. It was even lemon - Andy’s favorite! If you too are intolerant of lactose, I’m sure you’ll understand our amazement. In case you’re not, trust me when I say it was borderline miraculous!
Read moreLife: Week 3
It’s been a mild winter, but this weekend, headed to my parents cabin to prepare for the January Alpine Trails Book Club, we found plenty of snow! After getting a later start than we’d hoped, we wound up venturing off in the dark, armed with headlamps to light our way in the driving snow. By the time Andy, Ingunn, and I made it to the cabin, over an inch of wet snow had accumulated on all our gear. While it took several hours to warm the cabin, we had plenty of blankets along with soup for dinner to warm us. Saturday, the temperature climbed quickly, with snow slipping from the trees in soggy clumps as we hiked out to help Ashley and her family make their way to the cabin.
Read moreGold Creek Pond Snowshoe II
For the second year in a row - third if you count the year nobody came - our January Alpine Trails Book Club outing involved a snowshoe to Gold Creek Pond, followed by an afternoon of tea, snacks, and convivial conversation at my family cabin. Watching the forecast as the date approached, I worried that we’d have a repeat of last year’s epic snowstorm, making for lots of soggy gear and photos smudged and blurred by fat flakes. Happily, by the weekend all predictions of 7-8 inches of show on Sunday had vanished. Instead, our group of 15 set out under a low, dense blanket of familiar wintry grey, with not a glimpse of the surrounding mountains to be found.
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