First, I need to begin with an apology. I’m sorry. I’m going to write about something really cool, and then tell you you can’t go do it for months.
For the last weekend of summer operations at Stevens Pass, my family and a friend tried the disc golf course for the first time. We rode up the chairlift, which seems like a rather fancy way to begin a round of disc golf.
My husband, Jerry, is a disc golf addict, so it’s a little strange we’d never been up there before.
Perhaps you remember the weekend? The sun? The warmth? The golden light? (I remember it vividly, especially since it’s raining now.)
It was a perfect day to be in the mountains. The fall colors were lovely and the sun was warm. A perfect day for disc golf, too.
Anyways, I like disc golf because Jerry likes it, but hiking is really my thing. So I just looked at it as a hike where a chairlift did all the hard work for us. (The lift drops you off at the top of the course and the downhill bike park.)
The disc golf course itself is fun. It’s also challenging. The roughs are really rough. It’s easy to lose a disc in a tree. Jerry, who can throw for approximately a mile, lost a disc in some trees about halfway through the course. I can’t throw nearly so far, so even though I have terrible aim, I only had to hunt for a disc once. It’s easier to keep track of them when they’re not so far away when they touch down.
It really felt like a mellow hike where I just happened to be tossing brightly colored pieces of plastic.
The disc course passes near the bike trail many times. Watching the bikers zip by was entrancing. I’m a big wuss about downhill biking, but I’m always impressed watching others. By then end, after a couple hours watching biker after biker flash by, I thought I might have to give it a try myself.
We had one final thrill toward the end of our trip. My daughter spotted a track that turned out to be that of a rather small bear. She was entranced. So was I, for that matter. It’s easy to forget with all the bikers, chairlifts and disc golfers that Stevens Pass is in the middle of a huge wild area. It’s no surprise a bear or two would wander through from time to time.
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Thanks to Mike Jeffrey for sharing the great photo of biker Gene Pires. I tried all day but was never able to get a photo that actually captured the action and fall beauty.
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