Mountain living, convenient access don't mix

By GORDY HOLT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Mountain living is more than views to Larry and Chris Everett and their daughters, Laura, 16, and Kristen, 13, who use three four-wheel-drive vehicles to cruise their hill.

"This isn't for the light-hearted," Chris Everett says. "You have to like being farther than five minutes from Nordstrom."

Everett teaches school in Maple Valley. Her husband is a building contractor who follows the work.

Laura and Kristen Everett are among 23 of 31 school-age Snoqualmie Pass kids who choose to be bused the 25 miles into North Bend and the 4,100-student Snoqualmie Valley School District. The remaining eight children in the pass travel east 10 miles to a one-building school district in Easton, where the enrollment is just 110 students this year.

"We moved here because Larry really likes to ski and because we thought that was our kids' passion, too," Everett says. "Well, that was then. Now it's club volleyball, which means four nights a week to practice down in Tukwila -- and back -- and tournaments on the weekends. But what are parents for if not to sacrifice?"

High on a Cascade peak there can be issues of sacrifice for youngsters, too, the Everett girls says.

"We can't use the phone! It's long distance," says Laura. "And it's hard having friends up."

The girls' access to classrooms in North Bend would not be possible without Stacy Chesterfield, a Fall City resident who has become a regular at the pass.

Chesterfield drives the school bus.

Depending on the weather, she makes as many as four round trips a day, but doesn't play fast and loose with the weather.

On a recent early-morning run with an empty bus, for example, the weather got so bad she turned back at Tinkham Road -- about half way.

"I couldn't see 5 feet," she says.

When that happens, Chesterfield calls each family on her bus cellphone.

Should highway conditions thwart a trip home from school, the children will stay with friends or relatives.

"These arrangements are made well in advance," Chesterfield says. "We want to make sure that everybody is on the same page."