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LOUP LOUP AND ECHO VALLEY,
WASHINGTON, USA, FEBRUARY 16-19, 2007
Washington State school districts traditionally combine the Presidents
Day holiday with a few other
days off in mid-February. Many families use the week as a ski week and
plan trips to British Columbia,
Mt. Bachelor or Idaho resorts. Others head to Mexico or Hawaii to chase
away the winter gloom.
Unfortunately, the winter of 2006-07 brought so many snowy days to Seattle
that school districts were
behind on their required school days so ski week was reduced to a three
day weekend this past year.
Bummer. My family decided to head over to the condo we own on Lake Chelan
for some relaxation
and skiing in eastern Washington.
We headed off on Friday evening crossing Snoqualmie Pass on interstate
90, then Blewett Pass on
U.S. Highway 97, then over to Wenatchee and the Columbia River. Pulling
in to Wenatchee I could
see the broad ridgeline where Mission Ridge spreads out. This was a
good snow year in the Pacific
Northwest and the mountains all around were draped in white. We drove
along the Columbia River for
30 miles heading north to Chelan and our condo.
Just outside Wenatchee you pass one of 10 or so dams on the Columbia,
Rocky Reach Dam. This
dam has an excellent museum dedicated to electricity that any visitor
to the area should check out.
We'd seen it 3 or 4 times so we kept on driving up the river. The Columbia
has been so thoroughly
dammed up in Washington State that the river is nothing more than a
series of narrow lakes, each one
backing up to the next upstream dam. This state of affairs is constantly
bemoaned by the local
environmentalists and salmon advocates. When the Columbia was free flowing
it supported a massive
salmon population. However, the power turbines tend to chew up the juvenile
salmon heading
downstream and the dams block the adult salmon heading upstream to spawn.
The federal agencies
that operate the dams (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of
Reclamation) spend tens of
millions of dollars every year trying to restore the salmon fishery
with very limited success. On the other
hand, all the hydropower produced by these dams is enough to keep most
of the Northwest lit up
without the need for coal, gas or nuclear power. As a result, Northwest
cities such as Seattle have
some of the cleanest air in the country. I'm always amazed and thankful
at how pristine the air is in
Seattle.
We pulled into Chelan at night and got set up in the condo for the
night. My wife bought the condo
(actually in the town of Manson just north of Chelan) a few months earlier
with some family trust
money she fell into. It's a nice place but we can't use it much in the
summer high season because that's
when we can rent it out to help cover the cost. Lake Chelan is 50 or
so miles long and stretches from
the arid hills around the Columbia River all the way up to the forested
north Cascades. It is one of the
deepest lakes in the world and a popular boating destination in the
warmer months. Any visitor to the
area during the summer should take a boat up to the town of Stehekin
at the north end of the lake. The
scenery up there is quite stunning. After an evening of wine, dinner
and videos we all turned in.
The next day my daughter, JulieAnne (age 16), and my son Kevin (age
14), headed off for Loup Loup,
a small ski area about an hour north of Chelan. Loup Loup is quite remote
and I had never met anyone
who had skied there. Loup Loup has a vertical rise of 1,240 feet and
spreads across the north face of
a small mountain just north of State Highway 20 between Twisp and Okanogon.
From a map it would
appear that Loup Loup is in the Cascade mountain range but it is in
fact part of the Okanogon
Highlands, a different geological feature than the Cascades.
Driving up to Loup Loup from Chelan you first drop down to the Columbia
River and head north on
Highway 97, pass yet another dam (Wells Dam) and arrive at the confluence
of the Methow River and
the Columbia. From here you head up the Methow (pronounced MET-how)
Valley for several miles
passing small, lonely ranches and farms. I can never figure out how
the few people living in this area
make a living other than working for the County road department or scratching
a living from orchards
and cattle. The surrounding mountains are mostly barren of vegetation
and covered in snow giving the
area a stark, otherworldly quality.
Further up the Methow Valley are the towns of Winthrop and Mazama which
offer world-class cross
country skiing. However, cross country skiing is too slow for my crew
so we turned right on Highway
20 and headed up to Loup Loup pass at 4,000 feet. Arriving at the ski
area I was surprised at how big
it seemed to be. You could see the entire run layout looming above the
parking lot. Ten or so runs
fanned out from the top of the mountain converging at the bottom where
a small day lodge stood. Loup
Loup is owned and operated by a local non-profit organization and staffed
by volunteers for the benefit
of local residents in the Methow and Okanogon valleys. The area has
a triple chairlift bought second-
hand and installed in 1998 (replacing a long, steep poma), a small remaining
poma and a short rope
tow.
We bought lift tickets, geared up and hit it for the chairlift. Our
strategy was to try each run going from
skier's right to left and then finish the day by repeating our favorites.
We couldn't ski the first run on the
left, Ridge Run, as it was blocked off for a junior's race. We hit the
other runs and within two hours
we'd skied the entire area. The runs were all fairly narrow tree cuts
with undulating topography that
invited quick carves. A couple of the runs had sharp, choppy moguls
which vexed my daughter but
because the runs were so short you couldn't really get in trouble. The
locals were quite friendly and
were all from the local area. Sometimes they seemed surprised to find
Seattle skiers on the hill.
Towards the end of our stay they opened up Ridge Run. Although listed
as a green run on the trail map
I thought it would be a blue run in most ski areas and it was much wider
than the other runs. It also had
a good, consistent pitch all the way down and was the pick of the bunch
in my book. The four black
diamond runs were accurately categorized especially given how narrow
they were. One thing the area
lacks is a true, confidence-building green run. Towards the end of the
day we tried the beginner's poma
lift just to say we did it. It's an ancient contraption but gets the
job done.
After about three hours we'd had enough so we ducked into the tiny
snack bar and grabbed some junk
food before heading back to Chelan. We drove back through Okanogon for
a change of pace passing
by some of the poorest farms I'd ever seen along the way. Back at the
condo it was time for dinner,
cold beer and a jig saw puzzle.
Overall, Loup Loup is a fun little ski area. I wouldn't make a special
trip to go there but it's worth a day
trip if you're vacationing in Chelan or the Methow valley during the
winter. Despite my first impression
of the place, I thought it skied small and question if it really has
a vertical of 1,240 feet. It felt shorter
than that. Later in the ski season I skied at Bluewood down in the southeastern
corner of the state and
at 1,125 listed vertical feet, if somehow felt much bigger than Loup
Loup.
The next day Kevin and I headed over to Echo Valley, the local Chelan
ski hill. The road to Echo
Valley branches off the lakeshore drive and passes through orchards
for several miles until you pass the
snow line right before getting to Echo Valley. Echo Valley has one ancient
poma lift and three rope
tows which are mostly used for tubing. The hill is run by the local
Lions Club and definitely has a retro
feel to it. It has been operating for decades and apparently has not
ever been updated. The biggest
challenge at Echo Valley is finding somewhere to park that isn't inches
deep in mud. I succeeded in
finding a semi-solid place to park right next to the cat track that
leads to the base of the poma lift, the
main lift. But first I had to buy tickets. Eventually someone showed
up at the ticket booth and sold me
two lift tickets.
Kevin and I then booted up and walked up the cat track to the poma
lift. Theoretically we could have
ridden up one of the rope tows out front and traversed over but Kevin
had never ridden a rope tow
and I wasn't going to teach him here. Actually I didn't want to teach
him period as rope tows have
gone the way of straight skis in all but the most retro ski areas such
as Echo Valley.
We arrived at the poma lift, an ancient device that looked like it
was held together with wire and duct
tape. No worries though. The beauty of drag lifts is that your feet
never leave the ground. So what if
the cable derails. There's no where to fall. This was a fast moving
poma and had a stiff clutch so when
the operator pulled the handle to engage your platter the resulting
jerk just about gave you whiplash.
Neither Kevin nor I got the hang of it until the operator told us the
secret. There was a small lump of
snow right behind the loading platform. The technique was to stand on
that lump, wait for the right
moment, then push off and slide into the loading platform so you would
already have some forward
momentum when the operator engaged the cable. Once we figured that out
we were golden. I deduced
that very few strangers ski Echo Valley so there was no need to fix
the poma. Everyone seemed to
know what to do.
The poma offered a vertical of 400 feet over two or three wide open
runs. A few pine trees were
spread around the hill. From the top you had a wide open view of the
lake and the Cascade Range
beyond. Even though this was a decent snow year weeds were showing through
the snow all over the
place. No rocks though so we skied all three turns with wild abandon.
The hill had a nice, consistent
pitch so I practiced quick slalom turns on my 157 cm slalom skis. The
snow was a little damp and
sticky in spots. I could tell that this was a snow challenged ski area
that could have benefited from
another 700 feet of elevation. The south/east exposure didn't help either.
After an hour we'd had enough and skied back down the cat track to
the car. After changing back to
street shoes we swung by the small snack bar for a bite to eat. The
walls of the snack bar are covered
with graffiti written by the locals over the years. Pictures of events
and local races are on display. It
was obvious that Echo Valley has a dedicated clientele from Chelan that
keep it alive during the two or
three months that they have snow cover.
In short, Echo Valley is an amusing little throwback to the days of
community ski hills, rope tows and
drag lifts. I would never make a special trip to ski it but if you're
in Chelan and want to get some turns
in but don't feel like driving the hour down to Mission Ridge it will
do. In the future when I'm in Chelan
I'll probably make the hour drive.
David Howe, aged 48, is a life-long skier originally from California
but residing in Washington State for
the past 13 years. He is a masters racer in the Pacific Northwest and
regularly clocks 40 or so ski days
a year, mostly at his home hill at the Summit at Snoqualmie.
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