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Two weekends ago Chelsea and I headed up to Tye River by Steven’s Pass for a weekend getaway.

We rented this great little cabin just a few minutes from the pass.

Saturday I headed up to Steven’s Pass and skied with Alex in the afternoon. It was gaper day but I had forgotten an outfit. Alex and his UW friends hadn’t:

Sunday we went hiking. The hike we were planning to do was unfortunately snowed in so we did two shorter hikes.

We started off with Heybrook Fire Lookout.

And then did Wallace Falls.

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Three weeks ago the Space Needle had free admission so Chelsea and I took advantage of this to head up 500 feet to the observation area to check out the sights after work as the sun was setting.

Here’s the full gallery of Space Needle photos.

Some of my favorites are:

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On Saturday a small group of Redfinners headed up to Crystal for a day of skiing. Here’s Alex loving the snow:

More photos from the day.

Saturday was my 9th day of skiing this season.

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This past weekend Katrina and I went for another hike. Full details on Katrina’s blog: Hike 15: Pacific Crest Trail to Kendall Katwalk. You can find some other photos I took on my zooomr page.

After the hike I went over to Rob’s for a The Three-Martini Renovation. We played hammer darts.

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This weekend I took the Mountain Madness Avalanche Level 1 course. I took it because the group I ski with has been in search of more fresh snow and skiing out of bounds seems like the most likely source. Being relatively safety conscious everyone thought it would be a good idea to make sure we were prepared before we hit the back country gates.

Before this course I was really only aware of two styles of skiing. Telemarking and downhill. I had sort of heard of Randonee / AT skiing but didn’t really know what it was. Not knowing about it I called and asked what I should do and the course leader convinced me to rent some AT skis. Boy am I glad I did! I discovered this whole new world of downhill skiing combined with touring. I never realized that you could ski up hill (using skins and free heel bindings) and then ski downhill on the same set of skis. It really is incredible. Unfortunately it is also expensive. Bindings are ~$400, boots ~$600, plus a pair of wide skis, ~$700 (I think I’m going to slap a pair of Naxo’s on my Monster IM88’s. Thoughts?)

Equipped with a pair of rentals I attended a lecture Friday night, then woke up early Saturday. I was a little nervous not knowing any one in the course and not feeling like I fit in because it felt like everyone there was way more outdoorsy then me and had summited all the local peaks. Fortunately, it turned out to be a good time. We skinned up the hill across from Steven’s, practiced searching with transceivers and dug a pit. After a full day on the mountain we had a few more hours of lecture’s in a meeting room at Steven’s. It proved to be a long exhausting day. I really cannot remember going to bed as early as I did that Saturday.

Needless to say I also had to get up at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday. This time we headed to a slope a little east of Steven’s, geared up, skinned up, practiced a group rescue (five people found three transceiver burials and two non-transceiver burials in fifteen minutes), did some route finding up the mountain, dug another pit, did an individual multiple transceiver search and then skied down. Unfortunately the snow sucked, too many hot days and cold nights.

Looking back on the course, I think the instruction was good, two days in the mountains was great but the problem is that I now know how dangerous the back country is and feel like I’m going to need sign-up for a few more courses to gain more confidence. I think the next courses I’m going to take are: backcountry touring and ski mountaineering.

…I really recommend the Pieps transceiver. They say that the best beacon is the one you practice with, but in the distance test the Pieps was tied for the longest, had no issues narrowing in on other beacons, and is able to flag found beacons when doing a multiple recovery. Also know that there are a bunch of other gear you need to buy: shovel at ~$50, probe at ~$75, saw at ~$50, backpack and on and on. Sure you save on lift tickets but the gear outlay is at least twice of regular downhill.

More photos on Zooomr, AviLevel1.

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Last week was a very long week. I worked something like eleven days in a row and each day was at least a twelve hour day. And in the middle of it all something outside of work made it even worse. So on Friday at the bar eating dinner barely able to stay awake, when Andre said he was going cat skiing my ears perked up.

Sure, he didn’t have reservations, it cost $400, they were probably full and I was drunk off the one beer I had at the office, but I said yeah, let’s do it.

He called Cascade Powder Cats Saturday and at 2:30 they let us now that they had a spot for us on Sunday.

Sunday at 5:30 a.m. I arrive at Rob’s house to meet up with him and Andre. We then bust it over to Skykomish (okay, ten miles past there) to this little blue cabin. We’re twenty minutes late and are convinced they left without us. As it turns out we were the only people signed up (the day before they had twenty people.) Lucky us! (Note: always go skiing on major football play-off days.)

We loaded up in the cat and slowly made our way up to their Yurt. While the cat was cold it was not nearly as cold as it was outside. Plus they had an iPod hookup and we rocked out to Wolfmother.

We then proceeded to ski in the driest snow I’ve ever felt in the North West. We got in three runs before lunch and probably another five to seven runs after lunch. Unfortunately it hadn’t snowed in five days so occasionally we would cross over some other tracks but for the most part it was freshies all day long. But the best part was that it was a clear sunny day. Those are extremely rare around here!

At $400+tip (how much are we supposed to tip!?) it wasn’t cheap and I probably won’t repeat at that price unless there is a major dump. Primarily because you only get around 10,000 vertical feet in (the gating factor is the slow speed of the cat.) My feeling is that $100-$200 is more around the price point where I wouldn’t think twice about cat skiing. Though they do have a $3000 season’s pass (their season is at least three months long.) Very tempting for next season!

Anyhow, the trip to the mountains was just what the doctor ordered and for the first time in a long time I got more than five hours of sleep.

See all the photos.

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In this photo from the craziness at Viceroy on Saturday night does it look like I woke up at 6:50 am and hiked up a mountain later in the day? (Boy did we make a wrong call on what hill to go to! We went to Steven’s and the backside was closed because they were running off of generator power; tragic given how much snow they’d received.)

At least I look awake in this one…

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Saturday I wrangled an invite to the Microsoft EXG party (so eHome, XBox and Zune) at Pier 30:

EXG Hosted on Zooomr

And it was quite the party. Free valet parking, numerous open bars, ice sculptures, air hockey, foosball tables, photo booths, three large rooms, food and Eagles of Death Metal played:

Eagles of Death Metal Hosted on Zooomr

But of course like the other large Microsoft party I went to two years ago only a few social butterflies from eHome showed up.

Social Butterflies Hosted on Zooomr

Which is sad because the people I ran into at this party are the people I usually either go out with or run into when I’m out. What I’d prefer is to get a chance to socialize with all the people who normally don’t go out but when there’s a big party they seem to all stay at home probably afraid that the space for the party is too large and they won’t bump into the people they work with. And so even though this party was bigger and more extravagant than last year’s eHome only party I don’t think it was nearly as good because it didn’t bring the eHome employees together. Now it did bring the eHome and other groups together in one space which I’m sure the vice presidents believe will create greater ties between their groups but really there was little meaningful interaction between the groups.

(Begin tangent)

After the party we went to a house party at Jeff and Chris’s place where I discovered that Jeff has a serious Lego addiction:

Jeff’s Lego Collection Hosted on Zooomr

Check out this condo he built:

Jeff’s Lego Condo Hosted on Zooomr

(End Tangent)

Compare this to our Redfin company party last night at Glenn’s house where nearly everyone showed up:

A Blurry Redfin Christmas Hosted on Zooomr

And we had a great time eating, drinking and socializing (though we tend to all those things at work too.) I’m sure next year’s party will be much larger and won’t be hosted at Glenn’s house!

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Last Friday after a blogger dinner at the office I hopped in a cab and went down to the Arcade Party at the warehouse at 3600 East Marginal Way. Unfortunately the cabbie got way lost even though it’s not that far south from Pioneer Square. At one point he ended up just south of the warehouse but there was a stopped train blocking East Marginal Way. Frustrated I paid my bill, hopped out, and climbed over the train to get to the party.

There I encountered huge crowds of architecture and interior design geeks.

Arcade Party Hosted on Zooomr

It was a good party though with $1 drinks and $1 pizza straight from a wood fire pizza oven on wheels.

Arcade Party Wood Fire Oven Hosted on Zooomr

On one of the walls at the party I found this message which I really enjoyed:

Arcade Party Hosted on Zooomr

This was my second party at this warehouse (last time was for a friend’s birthday party) and highly encourage you to attend any parties you get invited to there. It’s a cool space, albeit hard to get to and from if you’re not driving.

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We went to Alpental this weekend for opening weekend and it rocked; blue skies, fresh dry snow (and lots of it) and good friends. And no regrets about the new skis. I feel like I’m skiing five times better with them.

Though I wish I had brought my real camera:

After skiing Rob took us to ‘Pour House’ in North Bend. Highly recommend it for cold beer, deep friend goodness and low key.

Of course we partied all night Saturday first at a breakup party for Ben and Bria and then at Havana. I think the highlight of the night was buying beers from some random at the street meat stand for the walk home (not that I needed another drink!). I then proceeded to sleep in until 3pm (I don’t think I slept in at all during the month of November).

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