drewtabke.com

Took this video on Washington Pass of the North Cascades Highway, WA. Filming by me, still photos and snowboarding by Kyle Miller, music by Andrew Bird.

I think for most of my friends, Barack Obama losing the 08 Presidential election would have been a tragedy too profound to even imagine. So when he won there wasn’t so much surprise, but rather relief.

And then excitement. And then excitement blocking traffic. And then a parade. Through the streets of downtown Seattle. Check out the sweet sequence of events:

Victory party in the Showbox at The Market.

The Showbox begins to empty out, and Barack supporters begin to fill the sidewalk.

The crowd swells, overflowing the sidewalk and sprawling into 1st Ave.

The parade begins pretty much spontaneously with thousands of people marching through downtown. The police responded incredibly quickly, baricading and rerouting traffic ahead of our path.

The march ended in Capitol Hill, where we filled an intersection and chanted and sang and toasted and so on.

Similar gatherings were occuring elsewhere in the city, this one had a brass band leading the crowd in song.

Hooray Barack!

Did a few great day hikes around the Seattle area recently. These are basically the closet mountain areas to the city since I’ve been short on time.

Went up to the Mt. Pilchuck shelter above the Mountain Loop Highway with Mia. Late start and early sunset meant we had the normally crowded summit to ourselves.

Wildlife in the parking lot!

Beautiful Glacier Peak

Amazing Mt. Baker

Lovely Mia

City sunset the same week.

My parents visited and we had some great times with them.Winchester Mountain near Mount Shuksan. There is a cool shelter up here too behind the photographer.

Went up on the 11th in blazing sun and over glazed ice. Penetratable with ‘pons no problem but the ski down looked a little grim. We had a summit attempt in mind for the morning after sleeping at the Muir shelter, but when the 4AM departure group came back in at 6AM when we were getting up because they got blizzarded off, we changed plans. With the .5-6” (hard to tell with the winds) of snow we suited up and lapped the upper Muir. Glazed ice gone, whipped Philly cream cheese in. As we packed to leave and descend in the continuing white-out, the Paradise parking lot all of the sudden became visible as the cloud deck lifted to just above our camp. It left us with sunshine, incredible views, and a spike in the temps that left a small window to shralp the Philly before it turned to tapioca. We passed several ski groups ascending the Muir as we skied down, and even more coming up as we hiked down the last couple miles of trail. I lied and told all of them the snow was light and dry rather than the unskiable glue that it had actually turned into in the final few minutes of our run. But maybe I just had the wrong wax?

Anyway, it was my first time on Rainier. That mountain is one of the reasons I left my home in Utah and moved to WA. It did not disappoint and despite the fact that in some spots on the Muir, “you can drop a bowling ball and it will actually roll uphill,” it was still a powerful experience. I’m in love (and fear).