The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

		Snow day… VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Today, my friends Keith and Lisl joined Milo and I for an adventure in the mountains. The plan was to dig a snow cave and sleep in it, with an option to sleep in the cars if the snow cave didn’t work out. If you don’t know, Lorie has retired from winter sports unless it is somewhat warm (or warmer) and sunny, so she was in LA while we were in 20F weather. It also got colder as the day progressed.

The plan was to go to Hyak, which is now called Snoqualmie Summit East, because for the last few years they’ve been closed since their chair lifts had been washed away by mudslides and generally, they only have about 3 runs, so I didn’t think they were in any hurry to open up a money losing hill. (for background info: I grew up skiing here in the 1970’s because it was the cheapest, possibly free, place for the folks to bring us boys skiing).

We met at the Chevron station at the Summit at 10am, then proceeded to the parking lot which usually has about 3 cars in it, which is equal to the number of backcountry skiers I usually meet on the hill. However, the economy in Seattle must be booming because Hyak (Summit Money-Losing East) is now open, operating, and full of people!

Because of all these people, there are also those damn ski patrol guys there too. (FYI: both Keith and Lisl were ski patrollers at Winter Park, Colorado and I even had an honorary “sweep the hill at the end of the day” experience, which was very cool).

However, the 4 of us hiked up and around most of the area waving to skiers, ski instructors and ski patrollers as they came down. I even heard a few adults say to kids “wave to the doggy”. By the way, I was on on snowshoes, without my snowboard, Milo was barefoot/barepaw, and K & L were on skis with skins. After stopping for a late lunch on the back side of the ski area, which is groomed for another chair that isn’t open yet, a ski patroller came cruising up (also on skis with skins). He told us that we needed ski passes to be there and that  dogs weren’t allowed.

I then had Milo pee on him.

Actually, he really likes dogs and used to do search and rescue with dogs. Milo even liked him and he seemed like a pretty good guy, even if he was upholding some stupid rule of the Snoqualmie Summit area. And no, Milo didn’t pee on him.

We of course didn’t have ski passes since we weren’t using the chair lifts! Apparently, the over-priced ski passes are required for any area that Snoqualmie Summit leases from the state, plus there are no dogs allowed on their land either. So, after chatting to him a bit, he told us we needed to head back to our cars.

As the patroller took off and we prepared to go back down, Milo wanted to follow him. Yes, Milo is a loyal dog to anyone who is nice to him. On the way down, another patroller told us the same thing, but he even said “I really don’t care, but someone told us there was a dog here, so I had to check it out”.”

As we reached our cars, Keith started feeling ill, so we called it a day and went home. I chose not to spend the night there since I didn’t want to sleep in the car with Milo if I didn’t have friends to share in the misery!

Maybe next weekend.

He’s been at the farm for almost 2 weeks… looking forward to his chaos again.