With my snow vocabulary so limited to corn, powder, ice, and variations thereof, it's hard to write up a post useful to you all. Anyway, here goes...
We were skiing up above White Salmon by about 9:15 am and were seeing the first riders coming down. I guess I'd label it "packed powder" for the most part. Off the groomers, it was very deep kinda' a little wet powder. This was good snow to improve backcountry ski skills. It forced me to keep the tips pointed downhill, not sit back so much and keep moving up & down and not freezing into the tele position.
By 12 pm or so, most of the ungroomed areas saw their powder chopped up pretty good, but in a good way. This chopped up powder was surprisingly easy to telemark on.
At 1pm or so, from Chair #6 we noticed a big group up on a knob to the Shuksan Arm above Hemispheres. It looked as if they were contemplating the snow/avy conditions. 2 people made the run down into The Canyon area.
It was warmer and a wee slick down near White Salmon. The most hazardous part of the whole day was walking on the slippery, icy parking lot out to pick up lunch and to go home.
Not a once did I ever experience genuinely "bad snow". Overall, it was the best day of the snow season so far and I've been up 4 times (but not during the bad snow spell from about 01/20/07 to 02/18/07).
