Teanaway Cabin Ski-In!

The Teanaway drainage, coming off the steep Alpine Wilderness, is one of Washington’s loveliest. On the high sunny side of the Cascades, it’s also a place that I never go as it’s open to motorized recreation. Smokey snowmobiles in the winter, piercing motorbikes in the summer, neither of which are conducive to the reason I go outside.

The forest service maintains several cabins for rental. Many are decommissioned fire stations or logging huts. In Washington State, they are booked months in advance. It was an unnerving yet pleasant surprise to see the Teanaway Cabin available only a few weeks ago for the weekend after New Year. What is wrong with it? I wondered. Is the snow spotty there? Is it because it only sleeps two?

As far as I could tell absolutely nothing is wrong with this cabin. For $40 a night, there’s a supply of wood for heat, a propane stove for cooking, plenty of snow for melting into water, a fine enough outhouse and nearly endless solitude. It’s likely along busy road to car campgrounds in the summer, but in the winter, it is a 2 1/2 mile ski or snowshoe to the cabin. It was difficult (and foolish) to find at night, but lovely in the day. Most of the snow mobiles seem to play at the end of the road and not too many buzzed the cabin. We spent the day reading books and snacking. We played some cards and worried just a little about getting on our skis. I thought we’d ski more, but spending hours reading was just what we both needed.

In other news, we got there in our new used car, a 1991 Subaru Wagon. It is pewter, 2wd, and for $1900 we hope transports us until the paradigm shift to many camping locations. Next up, a bike rack for the darn thing so we can do some serious bike touring and camping trips in the warm sunny early spring back out on the East side of the mountains.