Great day at Baker today! Did the drive from N. Seattle to White Salmon base in about 2.5 hours. 542 was in really good shape.
About 7 inches of fresh snow overnight at Baker. Crowds were light and there were tons of fresh lines until 11am. After that it took a bit more searching but there was still plenty of goodness if you knew where to look. Spent the morning off Chair 8, then switched to 6 and 1 in the afternoon. They are having issues with the new Chair 1 lift that required them to skip loading every third chair or so (something about broken hydraulics and the cable sagging too low when loaded).
Baker has pretty good coverage now. It's not like late season, but there wasn't a whole lot of dodging rocks or trees required today.
As we rode up Chair 6 in the afternoon we could see where patrol had dropped charges along the top edge of the far side of the canyon. It didn't look like the charges set off any slides (just big holes).
All in all, a great day on the mountain. I didn't see any evidence of people heading along the ridge toward Table Mountain and beyond so maybe people are heeding the stern avy warnings.
