Shivering Shadow Of The Lucy Park One-Armed Thin Man Skiing Mount Baker

It was to Lucy Park I ventured today to join the throngs enjoying the Big Chill.

There are still a lot of leaves in the trees, but many have fallen, as you can see via the Shadow of the Lucy Park Thin Man.

One would think that between the night after night of freezing temperatures, paired with a howling strong wind, that all the leaves would have left the trees by now.

I would not want to be in upstate New York right now.

Snow flurries had been predicted for my area, overnight, but there was nothing white on the ground visible when the sun arrived to do its daily illumination duty.

In my old home zone the Mount Baker Ski Area has enough snow on the ground to open. Some sort of bagpipe ceremony marked the start of the first chair lift of the skiing season.

Here is a screen cap of part of the Mount Baker Ski Area website's home page.

I have not been skiing this century. By the 1990s I was cross country skiing, which is a free thing to do, where skiing at a location like Mount Baker you pay to ride the chair lifts. And I was surprised to see you pay way more than I remember paying, long ago.

A blurb from the Mount Baker Ski Area website with lift price info...

Daily lift ticket prices will be reduced for today and Sunday to $74.07 U.S. for Adults, Youth will be $46.53, Child $31.48, and Seniors $62.27. (prices do not include 8.0% WA State sales tax)

Yikes! That is the reduced price for today and Sunday. I did not see what the non-reduced price was.

What I do know for certain is I will not be doing any skiing any time soon...

Mr. Forrester Cools Down Washington Heatwave Via Mount Baker

The past couple days I have been hearing from my old home zone of Western Washington that the Puget Sound is experiencing a record breaking heatwave.

A couple days ago I found myself explaining to a Texas local how different the landscape is at my current Texas location than the landscape at my old home zone.

As in, in Mount Vernon on a hot day, or any old day, I could drive a few miles to the west and be at a saltwater beach, with multiple choices as to which beach at which one wanted to be.

Or, on a hot day, or any old day, I could drive a few miles to the east and be in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

I screen capped that which you see above last night, from Facebook, via my Facebook Friend, Mr. Forrester.

Yesterday Mr. Forrester and his wife escaped the 85 degree heatwave and headed a few miles northeast, eventually ending up at the location you see above, a view from the Mount Baker ski resort.

I do not know if the record still holds, but at one point in time the area of the Mount Baker ski resort had the world's record for deepest snow.

As you can see via the words Mr. Forrester posted "It was 85 degrees and 15 minutes ago."

That is about how fast one can go in Western Washington from being HOT to being cooled. The final ascent to the Mount Baker ski resort is rather steep, going from the Nooksack River valley, up and up, with the temperature dropping as the elevation rises.

Patches of snow remain at the Mount Baker ski resort through the summer, with the road to the final parking lot sometimes not opening til late August or September. From that parking lot, when it finally opens, one has a direct view of the Mount Baker volcano. and an excellent trail of switchbacks to the summit of Tabletop Mountain.

Or, from that final parking lot, one can hike the trail up the north side of Mount Baker. I have only done the Tabletop Mountain hike. I have hiked up Mount Baker, multiple times, from the south side.

And at my current location, for hundreds of miles in any direction I can not find a saltwater beach, or a mountain with snow. I can currently find a lot of colorful wildflowers, and sneeze provoking pollen from various sources...

Up Early On A Balmy Sunday Texas Morning Thinking About A Snowy Washington Volcano

I'm up about the same time as the sun, this Sunday morning of November 21.

As you can see, looking through my patio prison cell bars, there is no steam currently fuming from my hot tub. There is no steam fuming because the temperature this morning is a balmy 63.

The temperature got into the 70s yesterday. This should mean the water in the pool has warmed enough to be swimmable. I will test that possibly debatable theory in a short while.

The current forecast for Thursday and Friday of this week is for it to freeze in my zone of Texas for the first time of this freezing part of the year.

Meanwhile up in my old location, in the usually semi-warm Western Washington, the north part of Puget Sound, in the Bellingham zone, saw a lot of snow blow in. Flurries dropped some flakes on areas of the rest of the Puget Sound zone. I do not know if the area I lived in, known as The Banana Belt, due to it being an area less frequented by snow than the areas to the north and south, got any snow yesterday.

I do know the Mount Baker Ski Area opened yesterday. That is a sentence I could not type in Texas, as in the Mount Somewhere in Texas Ski Area opened yesterday. On my Durango Washington Blog, yesterday, I blogged about Mount Baker, it being the snowiest place on the planet, with a record breaking 95 feet recorded in 1999.

In winter I used to be able to look out my kitchen window and see the Mount Baker volcano. In Texas when I look out a window I do not see any volcanoes.

It is time to go skiing now, I mean swimming.