March 26, 2006, Tour de Snoq

After two weeks in the sun in Costa Rica, today was the day the for a Quixotic tour of Snoqualmie- all four areas and all (major) lifts. Driving up the pass, I was surprised to see wet snow at around 2800 ft, and then real snow in the Alpy parking lot. Chair 2 wasn't open until 9:45 or so, so I ran laps on the bottom until then, and then down Upper Intl (3+ inches of fresh over boilerplate, among moguls) and two laps on Edelweiss Bowl (same). Really, really inconsistent skiing, a few nice turns punctuated with hard, icy edging. <br>     Hopped in the car, and ran to the Silver Fir lift; a few laps on very, very nice creamy spring snow, and then to the Hyak X-over; it was nearly empty on the Keechelus lift, and the skiing was pretty damn nice (again soft spring snow with patches of icy moguls). A run back to Silver Fir, and then over to the Central Quad (quick lap) and then over again to the Triple 60, up and over to West. A traversing run all the way to the Quad, a few laps on the nice spring snow, and then back over to Silver Fir, lift by lift. <br>     The snow was coming down all day long (with a few sun breaks) and the temps were at the freeze line all over. Surprisingly, the skiing was far better at the three lower resorts, and it is looking like a superb spring season!

We did the same thing. Thinking this was the last weekend for Hyak (it's now next weekend) we started there. Plenty of nice unskiied cream topping over the groomed, but pretty rough in the woods. After a couple hours we worked our way to central for lunch, with a few laps on Silver Fir along the way. After a couple cruisers at West we reversed the order. By now it was mid-afternoon and the crust under the new was softer and a bit grabby. We eschewed Alpental suspecting it to be as you described. And Hyak is walking distance from Rick's cabin. All in all a very nice 6hrs.