WHITE PASS, WASHINGTON, USA, DECEMBER 9th, 2006

I found myself with a free Saturday in early December last year and what does an obsessive skier do
with a free Saturday during a good snow year? Hit the road and ski somewhere new. I rounded up my
daughter JulieAnne (age 16) and son Kevin (age 14), loaded up the skis and hit to the road in my
trusty Ford Explorer (age 8) to White Pass which none of us had ever skied before. We drove through
southern King County on I-405, then Highway 167 to Puyallup where we exited and took surface
streets south towards Mt. Rainier. It was overcast (big surprise) so we couldn't see the mountain but
we knew it was looming over us filling up half the horizon to the southeast. Rainier is 14,410 feet high
but 12,000 of that is free-standing mountain so it is an enormous mountain and dominates western
Washington. It holds half of all the glacial ice in the lower 48 states (the other half is mostly in the north
cascades).

As we drove through southern Pierce County the city of Puyallup gave way to smaller towns, 2 acre
homesteads, small farms, etc. JulieAnne and I played a game called "spot the meth lab." Pierce County
has a reputation for meth labs. The more run-down the house or the more old cars that were parked in
the yard, the likelier it was that the residents were inside cooking methamphetamine we figured. This
helped pass the time until we left civilization around Elbe. We then turned off Highway 161 onto
Highway 7 and drove south to Morton. We then headed east on Highway 12 which would pass south
of Mt. Rainier and eventually hit White Pass.

We bought some lunch food in a small market in Randle and continued east. This area was historically
supported by logging but with the logging restrictions that were put in place by the Clinton
Administration in the 1990s the area has struggled. The locals are trying to supplement the remaining
logging industry with tourism.

About halfway between Randle and Packwood I passed a dark blue car traveling in the opposite
direction. I then saw in my rear view mirror that the car did a U-turn and started following me. I knew
what that meant. Within seconds the lights came on and I was pulled over. This was the State Police.
He apparently radared me doing 70 mph in a 55 mph zone. After the usual background check to see if
I had any outstanding arrest warrants he wrote me a speeding ticket. Shit. This really put a damper on
my day. I had gone 11 years without a speeding ticket.

We drove on in silence through Packwood and within a half hour we arrived at White Pass, three
hours after leaving home. There was a fair amount of skier traffic that day but we found a parking place
right up front and geared up.

White Pass has 1,500 feet of vertical drop and is served by four chairlifts (one a high speed quad) and
a T-Bar. The area is famous for being the place where Phil and Steve Mahre, twin brothers, grew up
and skied. Phil and Steve anchored the U.S. Ski Team in the late 70's and early 80's with Phil winning
the overall World Cup trophy three consecutive years plus a gold medal in slalom in the 1984
Olympics (where his brother Steve took silver). To this day they are still justifiably famous in the Pacific
Northwest. They both live in Yakima about 50 miles east of White Pass where they amuse themselves
with auto racing. Until Bode Miller came along, Phil held the record for the most World Cup races
won by an American male at 16 (27 if you count the combined events which most purists dismiss as
paper races).

As an aside, when I was younger I fancied that I could somehow make the U.S. Ski Team. Those
dreams vanished one day when I had the opportunity to ski behind Phil and Steve (unknown to them)
at Park City, Utah in 1977. OH MY GOD!! They skied at 60 mph like they were casually sliding
down a beginners run. The sound of their bases on the snow was like a jet engine going full throttle. I'll
never forget that experience. A couple of years ago I saw Steve Mahre again at a Seattle ski show and
told him about that day long ago. A really nice guy.

Neither Phil nor Steve were there that day so I couldn't relive Park City. We started off by taking the
high-speed quad to the top and then hit the backside of the mountain where a double chair served four
blue runs. The weather was cloudy and cold with light snow falling. We hit all four pleasant, rolling blue
runs. One had a race course set up which I poached a couple of times. We then took Main Street
which the trail map showed as a blue run going all the way to the base. In reality it was just a long cat
track with a short steep pitch necessitating the blue designation.

Next we went up the high-speed quad for 3 or 4 laps sampling the Holicade, Tucker and What? Runs.
My son Kevin loves skiing through the trees and these runs did just that with little bouncers, jumps and
rollers along the way. Each run merged onto Cascade which is the main run served by the quad chair.
Cascade then hits a cat track that skirts a cliff band that runs across the entire ski area. This cliff band
is an unfortunate terrain feature in that it really cut White Pass in two and results in a lot of merging
skier traffic in the places where it was possible to get through the cliff band. I didn't see any collisions in
these breaks in the cliff band but I imagine the ski patrol spends a lot of time monitoring these breaks.

On our fourth run off the quad chair my daughter and I took off expecting Kevin to follow us. We went
about a 100 yards, stopped and waited for Kevin. We waited and waited but he never showed up.
Kevin is autistic but usually knows what's going on around him so I wasn't too worried. After a while
JulieAnne and I skied down to the bottom hoping we'd find him there. No luck. I met a ski patrolman
at the base of the quad chair and asked him to radio up a report to the other patrolmen to look for
Kevin. I left JulieAnne at the base to wait and see if Kevin showed up while the patrolman and I went
up the quad chair. Just before getting to the top we got a radio report from another patrolman who had
found Kevin and was waiting with him on Cascade run. We blasted down and met up with him and
thanked the patrol for their quick action. Apparently Kevin had taken his favorite run through the trees
instead of following JulieAnne and I and ended up on Cascade run.

After this scare we met up with JulieAnne and decided to hit the terrain park over on the east side of
the area served by a short triple chair. We amused ourselves skiing the jumps, berms and little half-
pipes for half an hour and finally decided we'd seen enough of White Pass as it was closing soon.

We stopped at the small general store across the highway, grabbed some junk food for dinner and hit
the road. We opted to head east on Highway 12 to Yakima and then double back on Interstate 82 to
Interstate 90 and back home to Sammamish. The mileage was slightly longer but much of it would be
freeway plus I wanted to avoid the site of my speeding ticket. Much of the drive home was in the dark
and pretty boring but overall it was a good day of skiing. White Pass is definitely off the beaten path
and unless we buckled down and made a point of making the drive and skiing it, it would be unlikely
we would ever get the opportunity.

As a postscript on the speeding ticket, I asked for a deferral from the Chehalis County Court whereby
if I went a whole year without getting another traffic infraction the ticket would be forgiven. This was no
small matter as a single ticket would increase my auto insurance premium $300 a year. Unfortunately I
did get another speeding ticket about 11 months later. I am currently planning to contest the second
ticket in court (and hope the cop doesn't show up so that it would be dismissed) so that the first ticket
will drop off my record. It's been that kind of year, unfortunately.

David Howe, aged 49, 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.