We were worried about encountering heavy crowds at Mt. Baker on the weekend of the Legendary Banked Slalom, but the telemetry and forecast seemed to indicate that Baker was the place to be so off we went. As expected, there were more people than usual, but the worst lines at Baker aren't as bad as the normal lines everywhere else.
Baker received about 6 inches overnight and the quality was better than expected given the high temps at which the snow fell. Had some fun early runs off Chair 8 and then we headed over to Chair 6 for a while. By 11am the snow (really it was graupel) started to fall in earnest and the winds picked up. We took an early lunch to deal with some goggle issues around 11:30. By the time we hit the mountain again at 12:30 the weather had degraded to a full on graupel blizzard. Winds were steady at 40+mph with gusts to 80+. We were about to call it quits at 1:30 when the accumulation of graupel hit the perfect depth and snow conditions improved dramatically. The best runs of the day were off Chair 6 at around 2pm. Sadly, the high winds forced the closure of Chairs 1, 8, 7 and 6 by 2:30. At that point we called it quits.
The conditions should be great tomorrow given the rate at which the snow was falling when we left. The big salmon feast was postponed until Sunday due to the weather.
Also, we saw more than 6 vehicles in the ditch on the way down before we even got out of the switchbacks. Be careful.
