Dec 28th, 2005, Mt Baker

A free day and no partners allowed me to make an early start. The report of 34 degrees was not going to stop the optimist, Baker is magical I told myself, it'll be good.<br><br>Raining hard at the snow shack, raining hard at the chain up areas and jeez, raining hard at the lower lodge intersection - gulp. And where's the light? Oh, I guess it is close to the shortest day of the year.<br><br>Got to the deserted upper lot in the dark and pre-plowed stage, snow coming down hard. Having been cheated on the snow free drive up, I took this time to practice my autocrossing skills and had a nice oval track session with the truck. Finally the plows came and I had to act normal again.<br><br>Being partner free with marginal weather I decided to skip the lost puppy act and not try to find Out of Bounds partners. Up Blueberry Cat Track and down Pan Face for me.<br><br>I enjoyed the skin up, playing with not using my heel risers like I read in a magazine. This does allow you longer strides and I'm now using my calf muscles more instead of hyper extending the back of my knee. Ah learning, it may be the funnest part of a sport to me.<br><br>By the time I'm at the top I'm soaked. Not from my rondo racer wannabe pace but from the snow landing on me and instantly turning to water<br><br>Down I go through a fist or two of wet new snow over a bumpy, semi-breakable crust that formed after the slope was all cut up by skiers. Very challenging skiing and very fun for me, the perfect classroom. <br><br>Two more laps and I've been soaked since the first. I do an odd thing (for me), I acknowledge that I'm getting cold and this trip will turn into a wet suffer fest if I keep skiing all day (no big deal usually). Visions of working in my garage appear in my head and I actually decide to call it quits and go get stuff done instead. Weird.<br><br>It was good.

AH!! Paste! Just what we need for filler.<br><br>It's good to see some high moisture snow laid on top of the rain crust. I'll do slime patrol tomorrow and report back in.

Wow!! We found 12-18" of well bonded, skiable snow to play with at 10 minutes trees. With good Viz -- at least in the morning. We were able to break a few windslabs below the steep role-overs, but they were not scouring down to the rain crust.