Alpental sits at the head of the Snoqualmie Pass corridor, tucked into a steep glacial valley where the Cascade Range closes in on all sides. It is one of the most revered backcountry ski destinations in the Pacific Northwest, drawing climbers, skiers, and mountaineers who come for terrain that is ungroomed, unforgiving, and genuinely wild. The peaks here are not decorative. They mean it.

Lot 3 is our winter home. RV parking puts you at the literal foothills of that wilderness, close enough to hear the mountain breathe. The community that gathers here is something earned rather than assumed, bound by shared cold, shared powder, and the particular warmth that only comes from people who look out for one another without being asked.

On this January day the temperature held at 37 degrees, and wispy clouds curled up through the rugged peaks, heavy and dark and luminous all at once, like tattered blankets that have been draped over giants made of rock. A lone building, Shot 10 as it is known, sits quietly among the trees below a sky that kept changing its mind. I painted through the day and into the evening, the canvas settling into night alongside the mountain as the snow came in for its rest.