This vacation house is planned for a precipitous mountain face above Cle Elum, Washington. The house is approached from below at the northwest corner of the site by hiking up a very steep trail through the trees on the west side of a narrow canyon, arriving at a level meadow where the family's existing cabin and storage shed are built, and then rising out of the tree line along a narrow cut on the rocky east face of the canyon toward the pinched front door of the new house perched precariously on an L-shaped ledge at the northeast point of the canyon. The house is first viewed from the road below as an uncertain attachment to the rock face just above the tree line of the looming cliff. The house is viewed again between the trees and across the canyon at occasional points along the 1000' vertical climb.

Arriving at the house, the journey continues up a steel-grate ramp to the front door and then descends within the house along a now wooden, sloping path beneath a plywood ceiling rising upward toward the journey's first panoramic view of the river valley and the North Cascades. At the foot of the interior ramp the building forks towards competing views and opportunities. A stair follows the cliff wall upward to a small loft from which a door leads onto a bridge back to the next ledge: the house is a switchback in the continuing climb to the top of the mountain. An interior ladder rises through the crotch of a second fork nestled high at the ceiling to create a two-faced, 360° outlook for the family's young twin sons.

The roof is designed to drop all snow to the downslope side of the house. Since the primary exposure faces north, the roof and windows rise to the south light and towering cliff views along the upper wall. The house sits at the point of the ridge to shed run-off downward along both legs of the retaining wall. A concrete chute at the midpoint of the long leg of the wall allows accumulating snow and rock to be funneled beneath the house. A small lookout on the west wall of the house pokes out beyond the trees affording a clear view up and down the canyon.

The house is constructed of stressed-skin sandwich panels built within the resistant enclosure of an engineered concrete retaining wall cut deep into the rock. The siding, chosen for minimal maintenance, is cement board panels alternately left natural gray or stained transparent green as a sort of geometric camouflage against the rock and sparse vegetation of the cliff. The siding pattern follows the fall line established in alternating gray-painted and galvanized steel roof panels. This same fall-line banding continues subtly on the interior with panels of A-face Douglas Fir plywood installed as continuous loops across floor, ceiling and walls. Diagonal steel struts brace the window walls, with aluminum-sash glazing floating just outside the structural wall plane. The primary window band is placed to allow a continuous sweep of the eye from valley floor, up the Cascade Mountain range, across the eastern sky and straight up the shear north face of the mountain looming behind.

Peoh Point House