Family Snow Play

So this past Friday, Stuart took a day off because he had some comp days built up.  This is the day Dakota is in school all day so the 2 of us snuck away for some parent time.  So what did we do...we went skiing.  And to our supreme disappointment even though we had just gotten 17 inches of new snow, it was so wet and heavy that the skiing was not that fun.  Lucky for us, we had brought some alpine touring skis from the OP that allowed us to unlock our heels, put skins on the bottom of the skis and head up hill from the top of the lift to the view of the day.  No pictures sorry. 

All that to say that on Saturday, when we usually would be headed for the ski hills with the boys, we were not that psyched.  So we had to be creative in our escape from the inversion fog plans.  Dakota mentioned a few weeks ago that he wanted to build a snow cave/fort.  So with that vision, we headed up to the Sno-Park.  With over 6 feet of snow, we found a nice hill side and spent 3 hours building a snow cave.


It was really hot in the sun so we down layered.

 We dug two caves next to each other and then connected them.  Here is Wren .

 And Dakota just after the connection was made.

 All the boys!

Both boys in there caves!

After the cave we hike through the woods a little way down to overlook the Umatilla headwaters.  The hill was so steep from here that the snow ball rolling was the activity of the hour.

 Check out how big this snow ball gets before it breaks up.  And then right at the end you can see it roll by another one that did not break up and is even bigger.

After the snow cave and the giant snowball rolling, we still had some time so we build a loch ness snow monster.  

Penguin Slide

We got an ice storm a week ago and school was delayed by 2 hours.  Everything was covered with a few millimeters of ice.  So the boys went out to slide down the hill in front of our house.  I did not catch any video or pictures of Wren but here is Dakota doing his Penguin slide. 

Cross Country Skiing with the Girls

Two weeks ago, I went cross county skiing with a great group of women.  We headed out from our favorite Sno-Park, Andies Prairie.  This is where we go sledding and near where we have hiked out along the Umatilla Rim.  The terrain is rolling hills atop confer covered plateau.  We had a wonderful ski, stopping for a bit of lunch and then carried on around our 5 mile loop.  Somewhere around mile 4 we lost the marked trail and were left confused for a few moments.  Our trusty map put us back on track with just a bit of cross country travel.  Luckily, we were on cross country skis.  Returning to the car after a full day of adventure with friends we headed home.