Cross country skiing in Winthrop

This weekend Shawn, Megan and I went out to Eastern Washington to ski.  I'm not a big cross country ski buff, in fact this was the first time I'd used skate skis ever (rented them from REI), but it was fun.  We left early Saturday morn, skied in the afternoon, painted Winthrop red Saturday night (which took 30 mins or so), and skied all day Sunday.

Winthrop is a long haul from Seattle (especially if you're only staying one night.)  It's about 4 hours away if the conditions are great, and you have to go through a couple of mountain passes to get there.  Luckily the weather was great, and the roads were for the most part ice free.

Winthrop Sunday morning:

We stayed at the Hotel Rio Vista in town which was great!  $100 for 3 people, right in town, with a great view of the river.

The view from the hotel:

Sunday was our longer cross country jaunt.  We rode for 3 hours, about 14km total.  I was really feeling the 6km climb...  It made that 14km feel like 30km.  Here's a map of the trails.  We started at the Chickadee Trailhead, climbed up the Thompson Road, then headed down Meadowlark, and back down Thompson Road.  It looks pretty short and sweet on the map, but that climb was relatively painful.

Other interesting tidbits of information...  Shawn forgot his ski boots in Seattle, so had to go rent another pair, we also got pulled over for speeding which sucked.  I wasn't driving, but that's never fun.

Anyhow, I put up a few more photos here.

Until next time!