We also received the goodness of March 1st in the form of 10" to 2' of cold smoke. Since Mission is closed on Tues./Wed. it fattens the prospects for Thursdays even more. Blah blah blah, everything was deep, faceshots, etc. Then the weather changed and made the mountain barely rideable over the weekend. Since then it's been warm and there has been some rain too.
Trip report for Mission Ridge, 3/8/07 (No pics since there was no photo slutting to be had.)
It was sunny in the valley yesterday morning and I had a few hours with nothing to do so I though I'd run a couple of laps at Mission before work. It's been really warm since last weekend and finally got cold last night so my expectations weren't all that high.
Upon arriving at the base area it was apparent that the warm temps have really done a number on the snowpack. The entire parking lot was bare clear to the gravel, quite a different story from a week ago. I was riding solo and looking forward to jamming out to some tunes to occupy my time. Well, my Bluetooth headphones were dead so no music for me. Gotta remember to check out that kind of thing before I head up.
Chair one was crawling along and the wind was picking up as I slowly moved up the mountain. Lots of rocks and dirt exposed on the way up; dammit, we aren't ready to spring conditions yet! Once I loaded the quad I realized it was only running at half-speed due to sustained 35-45 mph winds on the summit with gusts up to 74 mph. Coupled with this was a temp of 19 degrees. It all made for a pretty miserable chair ride without any tunes. I ran a few laps through Bombers Bowl to loosen the legs up; it looked like it was going to be a groomer day. Down lower it was almost like corn snow and suprisingly pleasant, but if you went off the groomed runs you were schralping and pretty much survival skiing. By about the 4th run I noticed that the wind was filling in a few areas with mystery snow, making for some choice turns. There had also been a couple decent turns off the groomers on recycled mank with an easily breakable wind crust. With this evidence I figured that a quick trip up Windy Ridge to Bowl 4 was in order. Worst case scenario would be a short hike for some shitty turns.
Hiking up the ridge was kinda sketchy; the wind was nuking and trying to tear the board out of my fingers. The right side of my face and my right hand went numb from the exposure but it was looking like I made the right call for the snow. All the way up looked pretty nicely blown in, although there were a lot of 'shark fins' sticking up through the snow. I didn't waste much time at the top, just followed last weekends singletrack and headed out to Bowl 4. Dropping in through the slot in the trees to Bowl 4 the first few turns confirmed the conditions to be pretty damn fine with 4-6 inches of somewhat firm/dense windpack. Great untracked turns to be had all the way to the cat track on chair 4. From there to the parking lot was payback for the good snow above. No grooming since Saturday night complete with the freeze and thaw cycle made for the worst conditions of my season.
All in all much better than sitting in the office yesterday morning. If anyone is planning on going up for the weekend I would recommend taking the time to cruise out the sidecountry (Mission Peaks yo-yo?) and check out the conditions for themselves. Not the best but better than anything inbounds.
