Winter in the Valley

This weekend we got a long weekend and got to play in the snow! Everywhere on the west coast has been seriously lacking in snow accumulation. Our Whistler trip was the only time we've been snowboarding because the mountains near us are kinda patchy with snow at least on the bottom. Fingers crossed for some spring snow. Anyway, they do have some snow in the Methow Valley which is North East of Seattle. There also happens to be a pretty amazing mountain house that just completed in the area designed by my talented husband. So we made a weekend out of a few snow sports and visiting with the clients and checking out the new house!

Someone thinks he's a lap dog.

We drove out to the Valley Saturday morning getting there just after noon and started out with a snowshoe hike. As soon as we started the hike we saw a pretty large bone (maybe a big deer or a cow) with all the meat eaten off of it. Didn't really think about it too much. Not too much later we saw another leg bone...hoof still in tact, no meat on it. Something on this trail was devouring large mammals...slightly terrifying. We saw a lot of good sized tracks in the snow too. I'm pretty convinced that with the warmer than usual temps lately, the bears were out in full force. I saw several tracks that looked to me like bears! That all made for a bit of a leery hike up the mountain, but we made it out of there alive!

Someone is missing a foot...











Sunday we moved on to our next winter sport...cross-country skiing. I forgot how relaxing cross-country skiing is, and it's an awesome work out. It was a beautiful day out too, so we ended up in t-shirts by the end.











After our skiing adventure we headed over to the house Ryan designed to get a few photos in the daylight. We also came back a few hours later to take some night shots and to have dinner with the clients and the contractor and his wife. It was a ton of fun, and they happen to all be really great people to hang out with.





Monday we checked out of our hotel and picked up some fat bikes for the morning. They're basically mountain bikes with fatter tires to grip better in snow. I had never tried biking in snow before and the trail we went to was so much fun! Just riding up and down hills of snow!









After a few hours of riding we hit the road and headed back to Seattle and back to real life of cleaning up our house and getting ready for work...boooo. Time to plan the next adventure :)