Mt. Spokane is one of my favorite places to visit. I’ve been skiing there since I was in high school. I used to make it from the top of the South Hill to the chairlift in a half an hour. These days it takes closer to an hour. I think it’s a combination of being an older and slower driver and the increased traffic as Spokane has grown into a metropolitan city.
I got to spend the day skiing with my friend David today. It was a classic bluebird day. Perfect conditions. I haven’t gone skiing in two years so I was a bit rusty. My leg muscles complained about the effort required to carve turns but eventually settled into the familiar glide down the hill.
We hiked up to the Vista house and enjoyed the view. The rock walled building was built in 1933 during the depression. My grandfather spent a summer working up on Mt. Spokane for the civilian conservation corpe helping to build another cabin. Mt. Spokane State Park is an important part of our local history.
As I made B&W photographs of the vista house and mountain landscapes I was reminded of the photographs by Ray Atkeson. His snow scenes of Mt. Hood really stuck with me. There is just a glow to the snow on a day like today.
After a half dozen runs and exploring some new routes that were put in since the last time I was there we headed back down to the parking lot where we sat on the back of David’s trunk like a couple of teenage dirt bags eating our brown bag lunch of sandwiches and a non-alcoholic beer.
Much has changed since high school days, but more has remained the same. The joy and spirit of being on the mountain in winter has not dimmed.
After lunch we made a few more runs and my body really started to feel the fatigue. David’s been skiing all year and has perfect form so I didn’t try to keep up with him… until the second to the last run when I just leaned back on my heels and let it rip. For just one run it all came back. It felt so good that we decided to do one more. One too many. I nursed my aching body down the mountain and felt supremely happy as we walked back to the car. The burn was good.
On the way home we stopped off at Whistlepunk brewery in Millwood and enjoyed the real stuff. It’s nice not having to sneak a beer anymore.
