Let me keep it short, the pictures and video should do the talking here. I met some former Snoqualmie instructor friends in the morning with plans to ski Mt Hood backcountry. We hesitated in the morning, wavering between going and not going. There hadn’t been any new snow in over a week. The forecast was calling for overcast with a chance of rain. Wind was looking strong. We thought it might be a day better spent playing board games and just relaxing. Fortunately, our stoke to ride outweighed our lethargy and we decided to give it a shot. The decision to go for it was well justified, as it always seems to be.

Below are some photos and a short little video to describe our day:

About our crew:

My main motivation to ski at Hood was a chance to ski with an old friend, Deverton. Dev was an instructor at Snoqualmie the year I worked there. We became friends and even lived together in Issaquah for a short while. I’m eternally grateful to Dev for introducing me to slacklining. He showed me how to rig a slackline with some webbing and carabiners, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Dev makes his living with some of the most natural jobs imaginable – all of them involve nature. He worked for the forest service for years as a crew leader doing backcountry hiking trail development and maintenance. Nowadays he has a gig in Sequoia National Park leading crews of volunteers in invasive species removal and management. He and his girlfriend Rhiannon are true outdoors people. Rhiannon is working on her masters, studying endangered butterfly food chains. It seems they both have established lives doing what they love, spending as much time outdoors as possible, living simply, and doing service for the environment. I have great respect for these two.