November 30, 2007 Baker

Spent Thursday evening in the deserted While Salmon parking lot in the van and it was a cold and partially clear evening.  Met Chris and Dave in the morning and we rode the lifts until around 2pm.  As mentioned in the opening day post, the powder in the ski area was pretty much trashed.  There were lines off Hemisphere and Pan and it was obvious that on Thursday the patrol allowed folks to travel just about anywhere.  Today, numerous areas were roped off and travel outside the ropes was with avy gear.  The coverage was quite good on the groomed runs and any obstacles were easily avoided.  Not much of a crowd, so it was a cruiser type day.  I skied with my good skis and did not hit anything.  I would imagine opening day skiers encountered a few surprises on some of the lower untracked runs.  I can confirm that Chris(Scotsman) skis just as fast in a ski area as in the backcountry.   Dave is amazing seeing this is his first year skiing.  Looked like a healthy number of backcountry tourers outside the area.  Saw a small group put down some beautiful tracks on Mt. Herman.

On a side note, my feet were happy with my downhill boot modifications and new orthotics. 

Chris and I were lusting over Dave's Iphone.  Hopefully he'll post a couple of photos. 

Had a nice day there too (Friday) skiing mostly on piste, scoping the area for future reference (I'd only been there a couple of times) and trying out new gear (yippeeee! mostly).

It was great to meet Scotsman and Climber Dave and take a few runs with them and will look forward to skiing with them again, I hope. Sorry to have missed you Zap.

Conditions were decent, most of the inbounds powder - where it wasn't too bony - had indeed been schralpped on opening day. The groomers were fast and not icy, and Shuksan Arm looked incredibly tempting. My new boots still need some work which kept my hiking-willingness to a fairly low tolerance.

Zap. Glad to here about the feet. Hope to catch up to you soon,