Hug Your Mountain

We arrived early on the bus from Bainbridge Island. The Crystal Mountain parking was already starting to fill up. Through the wind and driving snow, hundreds of skiers were arriving at the base of the giant mountain to enjoy several feet of new snow that had fallen at the tail end of last week's winter storm.

I had agreed to chaperone my son and nearly 20 other teenagers who take the ski bus to the large resort in the shadow of Mount Rainier every week. It was my turn to be the responsible adult, make sure the kids all got back on the bus and be there in case of an emergency.

I hadn't been to Crystal for many years.

It's an impressive facility, the largest ski mountain in the state with 50 runs on some 2,600 acres. It has 11 chair lifts and a gondola that provide access to 3,100 vertical feet of terrain across half a dozen peaks and basins.

We took the gondola up to the summit. Nice to stay dry and kind of warm while ascending effortlessly to the powdery heights. I chatted with some young skiers, whose wide curled-up, next-generation boards I admired. Ideal for deep snow. Makes you feel like you're floating on top of the snow, they said.

I didn't quite float on top of the soft wet snow on my oldschool skis when I headed down and I had to go slow on blue runs where I can usually go at a decent speed. But once I skied farther down, I really enjoyed the terrain.

Still, I was homesick for Bluewood.

It felt like the way we long for the Touchet Valley when we're back on the West Side.

As soon as I spend any time standing long lines, dodging skiers, trailing bumpers or spending a small fortune on any outing, I start to remember how good we have it in our little corner of the state.

When it pours incessantly on Puget Sound, I start to ache for serotonin skies that open up somewhere between Cle Elum and Ellensburg. I conjure up the brush-studded vistas on the way to Yakima and visualize what lies beyond the Columbia River at Burbank.

Once I hit the 124 cutoff, the whispering begins. From the soft rolling wheat fields it comes, heightened by the smell of sweet grass and the glowing heavens in the summer, illuminated by the pale blue hues of the snowy fields in the winter.

Thoughts of Bluewood, which I had on Saturday when I gazed at Crystal's socked-in rocks around me, made me miss it that much more.

Where else can you climb above the mists of the valley to the wide-open panoramas and lay eyes on the magnificent Blues? Where else do you know your mountain staff personally ?

Where else can you be among friends, walk right up to the ski lift without much waiting or catch a cat ride to the virgin snows of Vintner's Ridge?

With all that on my mind, it's a good time to remind our readers what they have in a place like Bluewood. With the new owners, who are trying to make the resort everything it can be, we should consider ourselves even luckier.

Where else can you shake hands with the likes of basketball stars like Shawn Kemp or A.C. Green? Where else can you get a lift ticket for barely $40 and see a nationally sanctioned border cross/ski cross event (scheduled for Feb. 12)?

Where else can you meet free-style skiing legends such as Glen Plake?

There aren't that many wintertime activities around here, so being less than an hour's drive from those sunny slopes is a blessing for us. Bluewood is a jewel in our crown, our snowbound evergreen heartbeat.

If you've never skied before and always wanted to, give it a try. Chances are you will have more fun than you've had all winter and your meal is going to taste better than Christmas dinner.

So let me ask you: Have you hugged your mountain today?

By Imbert Matthee