The GMAT to Snowshoes is like...

In the name of education, Steve had to sacrifice a perfectly good, nearly-sunny Saturday to spend more than four hours locked up in a room trying to remember calculus and where commas go in a sentence.

So, in his honor, I joined up with Anne, Ira, Nate and Annick to snowshoe up Lake Valhalla just past Stevens Pass. Actually I would have gone anyway, but I occasionally thought of Steve and how much it must suck for him to be suffering through the GMAT when the snowshoe trail was just perfect.

To me, Stevens Pass seems to be a bit of the ugly stepchild to Snoqualmie (mostly, I think, because it's farther away from the city and you have to pass through towns with names like "Startup" and "Goldbar" to get anywhere). But the trail that Anne picked was glorious in every way - just enough snow to make it an effort, few enough people to not drive you crazy and a wide enough trail (well, actually, it was a forest road) so that you could walk next to each other.

We didn't actually make it the roughly three-and-a-half miles to the lake because as we got closer, we realized we were walking under wide slopes that screamed "Avalanche!" from every direction. Or maybe that was just the wind carrying Ira's shouts after he had fallen (more about that below.)

Two things I learned on this trip:

1. A new piece of trail etiquette, which is always good to know: Apparently, Anne tells me that you are not supposed to snowshoe across cross country ski tracks if there is ample room to make two trails. Sort of like bike/walking lanes. Makes sense, although I became so obsessed with making sure I wasn't ruining someone's tracks that for the rest of the day I paid more attention to the ground than the actual scenery. And inevitably, I'm sure I messed up someone's tracks. Sorry!

2. This blog can be a great tool for embarrassing your friends! I won't include the video of Anne trying to play "snowball" with a ski pole here (mostly because it's not very good quality) but I will tell you about how Ira, the gallant skier among us, bit the dust at least three times on his cross-country skis. Of course, we are the sort of friends that whipped out our cameras and took pictures, while laughing, of him trying to get up again instead of actually helping while he was flailing on the ground like a turtle on its back. (Luckily his dog Callie was kind of enough to run to his assistance.)


But friends, don't worry. Tomorrow it's Steve's turn to be embarrassed. Stay tuned for my naked video of him on Tiger Mountain! No, just kidding. Sort of.

P.S. All the photos that look good in this blog were taken by Ira and Anne.