Mt. Baker 1/7/07

I went to Baker today and it was nice. We got up there about 9:30, and there was a big line up at chair 7 becuase of a delayed opening. I could here tons of avy control going on. They never opened up chair 1 and 6 all day, we saw some patrol hitting 6 and it look really nice in the morning. We allmost hiked from chair 3 to get up to the bottem of the canyon but it was getting pretty wet by than. The snow wasnt to bad, there was anywhere from 6" to 14" of heavy windblown snow off of the groomers but it got very heavy fast. We hit a few tree runs that were nice before the temps got really high but overall a really good day. As much as I wanted to ride chair 6 I figured that it would good for the weekday skiing. But It got really warm and the snow was heavy and deep. This is my frist post and I love the site.

Pretty sexy for a first report! Crazy weather this season, eh. (jus' fakin' I'm a Southerner)

Was up for Sun-Wed, Here's my reports.

1/7/07 - Sunday - Near Mt Baker, WA. Pretty high snow line, folks being directed to park at White Salmon at 0930, and very wet snow falling, so we decided to do some snowshoeing instead. Hit the Salmon Ridge Point Road trail that starts on a hairpin turn about 1/4 mile down from the ski hill and was confronted with an ungroomed and unbroken snow covered path (It's usually cross-country groomed) that had turned back a cross-country skier and his young son after less than 30 yards. We broke trail for 2 miles out to the first big switch-back where we made a Fox-n-Geese field, but were too tired to play the game, so we headed back. Wet snowfall intermittently. Met two 3-person parties coming up our track who were very appreciative we had done the hard work in the 3 foot deep snow that even with snowshoes sank us about 2 feet deep every step. Heard lots of bombs going off at the resort including one last big one. TomK & Kerry.

1/8/07 - Monday - Mt Baker. Rain/snow mix yesterday left a rain crust that was pretty heinous on the lower 1/5th of the hill. Weather was overcast with a few sun holes in the AM. We scored first chair of the day and were able to find some nice untracked back in amongst the trees off of chair 8. Watched a snowboarder take a 40-50 foot drop underneath C-5 in the cliff zone and ride away to much applause. TomK & Kerry.

1/9/07 - Tuesday- Mt Baker. Raining and windy at the White Salmon Lodge. Pan dome chair closed due to wind. Staff all in fishermen's raingear. Snow level 4000 feet, expected to lower starting in the afternoon down to 1000 overnight. We ain't paying to ski in this crap WX! Even the ticket seller suggested skipping it. TomK & Kerry.

1/10/07 - Wednesday - Mt Baker. Heavy overcast with a few blue holes and 4-8" of dust on crust. At least the new was well bonded to the old as it had started out as rain and slowly got colder overnight. Finding the right aspect of slope with respect to the wind let us farm some nice mid-shin deep powder turns, but over a ridgeline towards the east and you were back on the crust. Back in the trees we scored some very nice untracked lines including a ten-turn patch between the C-8 lift and Big Hemi. Noticed that the hill gets VERY tracked out in just a half day as there are a lot of adventurous types up there. TomK & Kerry.