The Ski Journal - Volume 17, Issue 3
MEANY LODGE, DUCT TAPE AND LOVE
Words: KADE KRICHKO 2023-12-04 10:39:01
Hold on tight. Two of the main rope tows at Meany Lodge, named “Worm” and “Mach”, unlock 500 vertical feet of steep, private terrain in the backwoods of Washington state. Photo: Cirque Gammelin
“When it gets going, it can rip your arms off.”
Chuck Wilder’s words rattle around my brain as I struggle to grip the frozen cord. The rope tow hadn’t looked like much from afar—an electric motor-propelled pulley system crescendo-ing up into an idyllic pine forest. Frankly, the warning had felt a little dramatic, even for a storyteller like Wilder. Plus, I’d already watched a group of five-year-olds make it look easy. Piece of cake.
My shoulders are the first to rebuff my ignorance, muscle and tendon straining to keep appendages in their proper sockets. The hands follow. Wrapped in gloves and an outer pair of shredded leather mittens to prevent rope burn, my fingers cramp while clawing for something, anything to keep me on the line. Nicknamed a “nutcracker,” the metal rope gripper attached to my harness—a prerequisite to board this carnival ride—swings menacingly between my legs. A foreign twinge of panic lodges in my stomach as the track steepens. My arms are just too torqued to lock the gripping mechanism into place. Near defeat, I lean forward and squeeze.
Earlier that morning, Wilder had touted this rope tow, dubbed “Mach,” as the fastest certified tow in North America. It is also one of the oldest continually operating lifts in the nation, a cornerstone of a ski area stuck in time. Cut into the heart of the Cascades, Meany Lodge echoes a bygone era just 60 miles east of the Bezos-juiced modernity of Seattle, WA. It’s an anomaly not lost on its constituents, a patchwork of skiers and snowboarders that stumbled upon this antidote to corporate ski culture and never left.
Some have made the pilgrimage for a few seasons, others link grandparents to Meany’s club-based beginnings. There aren’t many skiers here, but there are even fewer strangers, a tight-knit mountain community operating since 1928 that defies the contemporary currents of our sport. As other feeder areas fizzle out, younger skiers continue to cut their teeth at Meany.
One by one, the five-year-old human rubber bands that tricked me into this fiendish rollercoaster shoot down through the woods alongside us. I dig into energy reserves not meant for a first run and summon the grip strength for a final, 38-degree push. Like the group that has dedicated their lives to preserving the century-long history of this hand cut hill, my mission is singular: Just hold on.
Meany Lodge was born in the height of the Roaring ’20s. Constructed by The Mountaineers, a non-profit club that pioneered much of Washington state’s alpinism and outdoors recreation, the lodge and ski hill formed a pillar in the organization’s early dream to bring city dwellers into the mountains. Set on 54 acres of private land donated to The Mountaineers by University of Washington professor Edmond S. Meany, what started as a volunteer-built, two-story cabin in 1928 eventually evolved into a four-story lodge capable of housing close to 100 people at a time. The structure pre-dated the plowed highway that now runs over Snoqualmie Pass, so Seattle snow enthusiasts would come by train, traveling from nearby Auburn, then hoofing the last 300 yards uphill.
Despite early human-powered outings on Mount Rainier and Cle Elum Ski Hill, skiing in Washington began in earnest at Meany, where volunteers cut trails and hosted slalom and downhill races. In 1930, they started the hut-to-hut Patrol Race, an 18.5-mile backcountry ski epic that still runs today. Powered by a Chevy truck motor, the area’s first rope tow opened in 1938, unlocking new terrain and providing easier access across the ski hill’s 500 vertical feet.
Meany, along with nearby Snoqualmie Lodge, was positioned to be part of a European-style hut system throughout the Cascades, but the outbreak of World War II paused that push, and the rise of lift-dominated day resorts ended the discussion, leaving the state’s oldest continuously operating ski area as an outlier in a new ski landscape.
It’s an anomaly not lost on its constituents, a patchwork of skiers and snowboarders that stumbled upon this antidote to corporate ski culture and never left.
We arrived at Meany cloaked in darkness. Escaping the diesel fumes and sledneck engine revving of the Crystal Springs Snopark lot at the base of Stampede Pass, photographer Cirque Gammelin, Josh Malczyk, Nick Langelotti and I had loaded a built-out Bombardier snow tractor named “Tomcat.” The beast resembled a snow-tank mixed with an old black box truck, laden with luggage and about 30 passengers as it rumbled through the forest. When the train stopped serving Stampede in 1960, Tomcat shuttles from the snopark became the main mode of lodge transportation, save for the few souls willing to ski behind snowmobiles or skin nearly three miles into camp.
Wilder greeted our band at the door. A retired army sergeant now in his 70s, the white-haired Wilder playfully barked orders at familiar faces, unloading bags and skis while cracking jokes. He’s been coming to the lodge since the early ’70s, and though he doesn’t ski as much anymore, he still functions as Meany’s Lodge Chair, making sure the volunteer operation runs smoothly. Because the ski hill and lodge are only open on weekends, that means firing up the 1938 Sears Roebuck coal-burning stove and checking to see if pipes are clear (the lodge does have electricity, but relies on generators when trees take down the lines). As we stashed our ski gear in basement cubbies, the rest of the world got to work, setting up tables, organizing skis and prepping the kitchen.
“Everyone knows they have to contribute,” explained Wilder. “Everything [at Meany] is held together with duct tape and love.”
The scene was a jolting departure from parking lot reservations, fast-pass lift lines and automated ticket kiosks—a community buzzing on an almost-Boy Scout honor system. While The Mountaineers do allow guests at Meany (hence our February field trip), there were few unknown faces under these cozy wooden beams.
“It’s just people who know each other,” said Lowell Skoog, a renowned Northwest ski historian who has spent time at the lodge and competed in several Patrol Races. “It’s not just folks who run into each other in the chairlift line off and on. They are regulars who go [to Meany] every weekend.”
Teenagers picked up board games from where they’d left them the week before. Parents cobbled together a cheese board. We made our way around an outer perimeter of old photos and lodge-inspired artwork by famous cartoonist Bob Cram, an avid Meany skier. Nearby, on a wood panel wall, hung an ode to Walter Little, one of the creators of Crystal Mountain and another esteemed Mountaineer. Wilder met us at Meany’s framed trail map. Hand drawn, the map has several iterations according to the Lodge Chair, each trail named after an infamous (and often humorous) folly. There is Martin’s Creek, Lucy’s Lagoon, and Ferguson’s Pond, all named after Mountaineers that didn’t make the turn on Psychopath, an aptly named traverse, ending up soggy for their efforts. Walt’s Woods is actually a clear-cut meadow that skis well on a powder day. Its namesake, it turns out, was completely bald.
“It’s just people who know each other. It’s not just folks who run into each other in the chairlift line off and on.” — Lowell Skoog
But the next day we find there is more than simply jest in those hills. After surviving the rope tow, we follow Amy Deyerie-Smith, a member of Meany’s Volunteer Committee, through a small patch of evergreens into a zone called Henrietta’s Woods. Dropping fall line, we score sustained steeps through tightly spaced, but clearly cut tree lines, gathering speed over rollers and slicing quick slalom turns for 300 vertical feet. Ski lines might be short at Meany, but lift lines are shorter, if not non-existent.
That’s part of what keeps Deyerle-Smith coming back each winter. The 28-year-old started skiing here when she was four and, despite venturing to other major hills around the Northwest, continues to call Meany home.
“I had forgotten how long lift lines could be and how slow lifts were,” jokes Deyerie Smith. “I used to be impressed when people said they skied for eight hours, but then I realized they were just skiing one run every 20 to 30 minutes. I like that [here] we can just keep going.”
She is right. In just over a few hours, we push our legs through tight glades, natural halfpipes and wooded chutes, scrambling back over spicy traverses and conveyor-belting ourselves to the top for more. Though we are on the colder eastern side of the Cascade Crest, a warm spell makes for stickier-than-normal conditions and the worked quads to prove it. In typical local fashion, Deyerle-Smith lets us know we should have been there a couple of weeks ago, when she practically had endless powder laps to herself.
Hidden in the Washington woods, a dream that was built to bring people to the mountains and keep them there is still very much alive, and has found footing not only within generational returnees, but newcomers as well.
That isn’t to say that the hill is empty. In fact, even on a wet and foggy February morning, over 100 people are finding their way through Meany’s ungroomed terrain. Most of the skiers and snowboarders have stayed overnight, but a fresh batch has come in via Tomcat that morning. At $25 for a day pass (and $600 for a season pass including food and lodging), it’s a hard ticket to pass up, especially for those just catching their ski legs.
“Our mission has always been about outreach,” explains Dave Maitz, a Meany dad and one of the area’s ski school instructors. “We excel with the never-evers and kids.”
Deyerle-Smith is a product of that mission, as are most of the families with generational ties. The late Patty Polinsky, creator of Meany’s PSIA-certified ski school and its director for 25 years, was Deyerle-Smith’s neighbor in Seattle and convinced her family to give skiing a try. Over two decades later, Deyerle-Smith wrangles new skiers and snowboarders as they work their way down from the upper tow.
By the time the lunch bell rings, we are smoked. I’ve lost track of the runs, but my arms say around 500, give or take. Back inside, Richard Botts commands the kitchen. A former chef at a Seattle seafood restaurant, he comes up every other weekend to cook, conducting a group of volunteers from his culinary podium. Food is part of the program at Meany, with adult Mountaineers paying $110 for Saturday and Sunday ski tickets, two lunches, dinner, breakfast and one night of accommodations (non-members pay $135). The kitchen crew whips up pizzas for 107 by Wilder’s count, and long communal benches overflow. With no Wi-fi at the hut, the morning’s on-hill trials spin into lunchroom legend.
“It’s a Norman Rockwell-type place with a MacGyver twist,” chuckles Jim Fahey, another long-term instructor up at Meany.
Just then, Botts’ wife, Sheridan, announces it is her turn to run the rope tow that afternoon, but that the bull wheel won’t be turning until everyone has washed a plate and piece of cookware. Eager to click-in again, kids line the wash basin, then run to throw on ski boots.
“Meany provides a great counterpoint to what we think of as skiing today,” Skoog says. “The very commercial, very mechanized, very organized, massive grooming, high speed lifts and big corporations running networks of skiing, Meany is a completely different look. It’s a different manifestation of the love of skiing that we all have.”
There in the lodge, still nursing sore quads over a cup of tea, I have to agree. It’s easy to call Meany a time warp, but there’s more to it than the low hanging fruit. Hidden in the Washington woods, a dream that was built to bring people to the mountains and keep them there is still very much alive, and has found footing not only within generational returnees, but newcomers as well. In many ways, Meany’s survival is proof that 3,000 feet of vertical and modern amenities aren’t the only things keeping people on snow.
“Unless you’ve been to Meany and experienced it, you don’t even realize that it’s there,” adds Skoog. “It’s good to have that connection to the old ways, to know that there’s more than one way to do this sport.”
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