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WATERSKI MagazineAt first it seems ridiculous, how could a man pull up to one of the public launches near Seattle, with mountains in the distance and pine needles pricking the sky and say, “I could do better”?
A few good men have done just that. They've carved out holes in the Washington soil and filled 'em with water and dumped in turn islands, gotten knees dirty to slope the banks just right, scrambled in slalom courses and mini-golf courses, tunneled access roads through forests and gotten sunburned while looking at their creations.
Radar Lake
Ever since Herb O'Brien built the lake on a ridge overlooking Snoqualmie Valley in the early 1970s, skiers have wondered how to finagle their way in. To all but a handful of people – close friends of current owner Mac McPherson, who also owns Radar Electric, and the R&D team from HO – the route to Radar is a mystery. Somewhere there's a narrow asphalt path that runs under a canopy of trees before it stops at an electronic gate. End of trip.
Here's what else is behind the gate: Mount Baker to the north, Mount Rainier to the south, the Cascade Mountains straight ahead and bald eagles pulling trout from the slalom course. We were fortunate. They let us in.
Ski Park
The country club of water skiing, Ski Park is to landscaping what royal weddings are to cake. They plant perfect little flower beds. They set rocks in their personal spaces along the turn islands. They have lights inside cement retaining walls. They rake gravel. They fly Old Glory at one end. In the middle of it all is water skiing.
The lake at Ski Park (Orting, Washington) is as clean and smooth as the snow on nearby Mount Rainier, but it's still considered a water hazard: There's a six-hole golf course around it. Some sportsmen have a habit of slipping off the bindings and, still in bare feet, chunking iron shots toward moving targets on the pond.
Ski Park's owners (including Greg and Mary Horn, above) will let you take a pass, but only if you buy a block of time. Skiers who purchase an hour (say, Thursdays from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.) have access to the water, the fairways and the meticulously laid grounds April through September.
Broho
When Joe Holder (below) helped create Broho more than a decade ago, the blueprints didn't show what he had in mind for the lake's edge. Today, however, you can clearly see what he wanted: checkered blankets, black labs, campfires, people staying for more than a couple of hours and eating meals out of something other than a PowerBar wrapper.
“It's like going to a private campground with the bonus of a ski lake being there,” one frequent visitor says. That's why Broho is in such demand for organizers of INT and AWSA tournaments. It's up to snuff for the most finicky skiers and the most domesticated families.
Members of Broho usually leave their boats on site for the season, and then bring in the family motor home on free weekends. What puts Hilltop – in Marysville, Washington – on the short list of outstanding sites is that owner Gordon Skoog has kept it simple. Rarely will you see a boat trailer, and never will you hear an irate skier trying to negotiate an Isuzu on the launch ramp. There is one boat, a MasterCraft, on the lake, and it's ready to roll. The keys are in it. The gas tank is always full. What more do you want – an Orange Julius in the cup holder?
The newest of these four lakes, Hilltop has built a reputation as a training site for tournament skiers. But it doubles as a natural habitat for ducks and geese. The only sound out here in the Cascades that doesn't belong in the wilderness is the humming boat. Yet the reality is that Hilltop has been around barely two years, and it exists because of the vision of a few men. The same kind of vision that has made northern Washington a gold mine of man-made ski lakes.
