BELFAIR -- Lots of hikers hang up their boots when snow buries the mountains every fall, and they whine all winter about how much they miss leaving tracks on trails.
Offer them no sympathy. Do not listen to them whimper.
Some of us must hike, year-round, and when the high country is frozen, we don't stop walking.
We just hike small.
December 23, 2004
FALL CITY -- You ride at night almost as much with your mind as with your body.
Your vision is a tunnel, cast by your headlamp. Logs, rocks, twists and turns in the trail come up quickly; you think fast or tumble. Unless it's steep, you tell by feel whether you're riding uphill or down.
When you stop, all you can hear is the quiet of the night.
It's dreamy or mesmerizing in a physical way.
December 2, 2004
Your head nearly swims by the time you follow the new Lime Kiln Trail into the mossy and mysterious canyon of the South Fork Stillaguamish River and reach the namesake stone edifice, a monument to those who toiled, sweated, ate, drank, laughed and cried here more than 100 years ago.
Who were they? Where did they come from? How did they build this thing? Did their wives and husbands and children live here with them? Were the winters long and lonely?
November 25, 2004
You won't have to worry about the other guy while fly-fishing spots along the approximately 2,000 miles of shoreline on Washington's inland marine waters. You won't find drift hogs elbowing in and casting in front of you. No boats will be spooking the fish by floating over the water you're whipping.
More than likely you'll be alone, knee-deep in the gray brine along a cobble beach, waves lapping the shore, seagulls squawking, the sea breeze blowing a salty scent.
November 18, 2004
After several years in the purgatory of a stagnant economy and less-than-bountiful snowfalls, Northwest ski resorts are again tossing money onto their mountains like a wealthy software company co-founder racing for space or trying to cure the ills of the world.
Well, OK, not exactly.
But the off-season improvements appear to reflect a healthy industry, and -- finally, finally, finally -- skiers and snowboarders have something to talk about as snow begins wrapping the mountains in cold.
Such as:
November 11, 2004
NORTH BEND -- The Middle Fork Snoqualmie River rumbles and tumbles green and white through a classic valley of the Cascade Range. It is ringed by rugged ridges and high lakes, laced by wilderness forest trails and waterfalls and stitched with premier rock-climbing routes. A few places are dotted with crystal mines and hot springs, and the river froths with paddle runs ranging from gentle to extreme.
It's a pretty magical valley, only 45 minutes from the largest metropolitan area between San Francisco and Vancouver.
November 4, 2004
LEAVENWORTH -- It seems as though you're tripping through the inner sanctum of the gods in the Upper Enchantments, all stark granite and ice at 7,800 feet, crowned by dragon-toothed peaks, adorned with lakes and tarns linked by meltwater rivulets. It's a place where clouds billow through passes and fall's angular light casts subdued shadows.
The ambience is of another place, another time, a lost world.
Only it's not lost.
October 21, 2004
MONTE CRISTO -- Into a chaos of glacier-carved stone we climbed, along a trail of roots, rocks and mud that could barely be called one, on a birding trip that at times seemed more a wild goose chase.
That's not to say it wasn't pure backcountry bliss.
Gothic Basin, high above the historic abandoned mining town of Monte Cristo in eastern Snohomish County, is an intriguingly stark crown of rock buttresses and ridges cradling crystal tarns and a lake, accented by patches of heather and huckleberry, the latter now burnished scarlet by the days of fall.
October 7, 2004
Gazing out at, say, the serrated horizon of snow-dusted spires along the Stuart Range from the top of nearby Iron Peak in the Teanaway country, it's only natural to want to capture the scene and take it home.
It'll stay sharp in your mind for a while. It'll stay sharp far longer in a good photograph.
September 30, 2004
WHISTLER, B.C. -- This 13-year-old kid looking like Mad Max in full pads has just whistled by your ear, so you step a bit more away from the trail and look up again at the 10-foot rock face on the A-Line trail. Rider after rider, one after the other, is dropping off the rock as if it were nothing, like it was just a snack of sharp nails before a breakfast of rusty bolts.
It feels like you're stuck between the frames of a "New World Disorder" mountain-biking video.
August 26, 2004
