It’s an early start after a late night around a smoky bonfire. The coffee shop is packed with the energy of a powder day, but the backwoods barista is moving at a glacial pace because it’s his Monday. So rather than wait, I opt for drip. It’s been dumping lately and I’m a bit short on cash, which is a familiar story here. After a conversational exchange, the baker/owner/barista says I can pay him later – because really, where else am I going to get sconed?
Outside the general store, I pick up an AT hitchhiker who lives in a van at the end of the road. As is the custom, he smokes up my Subaru on the transit up the canopied access road. We trade stories about hut trips, local objectives and promising towns with names like Terrace or Trout where we might someday spend a winter. I discover this part-time bartender once shared a school bus with the local lazy-eyed patroller who was in my level one avalanche class at Rogers Pass. So we talk current stability then go off-topic to weigh the pros, cons and costs of becoming a guide. But the ramble stops cold when we hit the lot.
Washington is home to the most glaciers in the Lower 48, so the first stop on our tour is Glacier, an unlikely ski town just south of the Abbotsford, British Columbia, border crossing that has long welcomed rebels, outcasts, hippies and more than a few wayward Canadians. In this chronically underemployed community, the whiskey of choice is Crown and the skis are fat, but Glacier is also a place where nightlife consists of a skate-ramp bonfire down a muddy spur road or sweating next to the woodstove while the bar band plays Ween cover songs.
Back in the 70s, when the sheriff stayed away due to an outlaw reputation, a small crew of Canadian Czechs migrated south to Glacier to build classic A-frames under the forest canopy. They made it an adopted home and became part of a community that has welcomed all kinds, raising pro snowsport talent such as Lucas Debari, Zack Giffin, Rene Crawshaw, Forest Burki, Tory Bland, Adam Ü and Temple Cummins, as well as local legends such as late snowboard pioneer Craig Kelly and the late father fi gure George Dobis, whose family runs the Mt. Baker Snowboard Shop.
Back in the 80s, a group of Aspen developers came to town with a plan for a destination resort designed around a footprint of condos and a model of revenue capture. They picked a place named Early Winters as the location, but the locals saw the future and fought back, winning with environmental arguments and an alternate community model based on Nordic tourism. The developers took their master plan north to Whistler, creating the village foundation for massive community expansion. But the modern legacy of this one small victory in the Methow Valley is a 200-kilometre network of meticulously groomed nordic tracks, a tight-knit community of AT sled skiers and stunning open spaces held in trust by the forces of conservation.
Downstream, past the catch-and-release Methow River, down the once-mighty, now-dammed Columbia and through the apple orchards and vineyards of Washington’s conservative east, sits the town of Leavenworth. In 1962, the once-dying timber town transitioned into a Bavarian-themed alternate universe– a bandwagon the East Kootenay town of Kimberley jumped on 10 years later–that is a commercial cash cow of bratwurst, lederhosen and oompah bands, with shops such as Der Sportsman, the Hedielburger, Gustav’s Bar and even a mountain bike shop named Das Radhaus all collectively benefiting from and conforming to the chamber’s commercial vision.
Yet it’s not the month-long Oktoberfest or Christmas tree lightings that draw our kind, but access to granite, whitewater, single-track and backcountry, a mix that makes Das Leavenworth the most sporting destination on the circle tour. As the cliché goes, local residents often cram multiple missions into a single day, mixing skis with climbs, floats with hikes, or bikes with brews while some festival rages in the kitschy downtown. It is precisely the over done image that has protected this foothill town from the massive Outside Magazine migrations that have made places like Bend and Boulder unaffordable and unlivable.
Crystal Mountain ski area is a land of alpine bowls, tight chutes and vast borderland stashes that range from north-back and southback shots to steep lines on Silver King, the site for last year’s North Face Master’s freeride contest. But like the terrain throughout the state, it is the feeling of rugged wilderness, natural power and mountain immersion that defines the true Washington experience. At Crystal the symbol of place is Mount Rainier looming over the shoulder of the ridge, but it can be felt in every Washington zone–in the glaciated peaks and valley towns, the deep lines and classic climbs and the mountain souls who make up the beating cultural heart of a magical place.
