March 5, 2004, Hyak

MW8 and I skied up to the top of Hyak for a quick pre-work run. It was snowing moderately hard with a few inches of fresh, lower density snow by 8 am. Wednesday-Thursday's snow was well consolidated below. At the bottom it was topped by a thin crust from melt freeze and/or light rain yesterday afternoon. By the top the crust was gone, but the snow was still quite consolidated. I floated on top of with my modestly fat skis (107 shovel, 75 waist) when standing or unweighting between turns and punched through when turning. This is consistent with my experience skiing the lifts at Alpental Wednesday night in the heart of the storm - the temps were teetering right on the edge. If there had been a lot more snow Wednesday evening it would have been difficult skiing for all but the widest of skis. It did seem appreciably lighter at the top of the quad (4300 ft) though. But you probably surmised all from careful scrutiny of the telemetry. 1.5" of water and 12" of snow doesn't exactly equate to champaign powder, more like oatmeal stout powder

untracked powder by any name, and a treat indeed for a friday am.

Absolutely. Thanks for motivating me out of bed.