I took off just after work and went up to Snoqualmie with Thomas, Matt, and one of Thomas’ coworkers. The rain turned to snow less than a mile before the summit, so it was pretty wet at first, but the temperature dropped after an hour or so and we had a great time bashing our way through piles of mostly-fresh powder. We called it quits after five hours or so and chugged back home through heavy rain. Lots of fun.

I was too busy working on the laserfingers last week to finish the prototype snow-visualization-laser-grid gadget, but decided I’d take my LAVI-zero backpack along just to see what might happen if I combined lasers and skiing. Two things happened, as it turned out: everyone who saw me wanted to know what that thing on my back was, and where they could get one; and the batteries died after about twenty minutes. Lesson learned: any ski-oriented electronic devices must be designed so that the battery pack can be kept inside my jacket where it will stay at least a little bit warm.