Gary Brill's avalanche class has gotten me so into snow science, i went to Baker today knowing the conditions would mostly suck: 2 inches of fresh on top of frozen crust. A recent history of dustings of snow followed by rain, with few dips into freezing temps.
The range in conditions was wide, as aspects metamorphosed throught the day. At the very base, spring slush at just the right consistency to be fun to surf on (on a snowboard, at least). At the top, lots of crust and expanses of thick crusted chunks - a weird artifact of inbounds wet slab slides, or slab chopped up by snowmobiles and snocats?
The hunt was on for slab melted enough under the dusting of fresh to be ridable. It was unnerving to go from melty slab that the board could cut through, into hard slab, sometimes from turn to turn. When the crust caught my nose, it was full stop or, at speed, an automatic forward flip. Luckily, this was mostly fun, as on landing you break through the crust, forming an instant 'adirondack chair' experience. So riding technique was to lean back, as if in powder - and this on a board with the bindings already set back towards the tail (arbor abacus 160). This worked pretty well, allowing lots of carving at fair speed, but still - at one point i cut too close to one of those crusted slab chunks, and bruised my knee punching through it. At another point, i did a flip and landed on a snow chunk at the small of my back. In colder conditions, dangerous.
Early on i found face from North Face to Pan Face above the cliffs to have the best ridability. Later on Pan Face chunked up, but the expanse above the cliffs stayed sweet. The very edge of the ski area under Chair 8 was good. A thin line just to skier's right of the terrain park under chair 8 was perfect, deposition off the terrain park's banked curves creating powder conditions.
The natural half pipe and the chair8 terrain park were both shaped to hard-pack perfection, very fun for a luge-like experience.
The epiphytes hanging off Baker's trees gave the forest riding a rainforesty feel. I'm still new to Baker, so i don't know if it's common to see so much green drapery in those woods, or if it's another 'gift' from global warming. With the moss and frosting, the pine branches looked very much like the crystal-coated buds of B.C.'s top export.
