Feb 28, 2011, Steven's Pass, 23 inches!

Due to questionable telemetry data because of the high winds last night we based our morning decision on the snow reports from the ski areas.  8 inches at Baker, 17 at Crystal and 23 at Stevens.  23?  Surely that must be a mistake. Either that or the marketing department did the snow survey this morning.

Regardless, we headed up US2 to Steven's hoping there really was 23 inches.  We were not disappointed.  The new snow was indeed two feet deep all over the mountain with drifts to 3+ feet on certain aspects.  The snow had fallen at temps in the low twenties and the quality was great.  Although there were more people than the normal Monday crowd, the lift lines that there were disappeared by 11am.  After the line for the initial ride up Big Chief I don't think we were ever in a line for more than 3 minutes.

Every run we made was exceptionally good.  Front side, back side, wherever...  Tons of snow, fresh lines, face shots, few people.

It was fairly windy through the early part of the day and it snowed pretty much non-stop.  Lines were quickly filling in and there was still no problem finding fresh lines when we called it a day at 3:30.

Patrol was doing some serious bombing in the morning.  There was some evidence that they were able to trigger a few slides (saw evidence of one on Double Diamond), but nothing like I'd expect given the major dump Stevens received.  Stability throughout the day was far better than I'd expected.  We weren't able to trigger anything that would propagate despite ripping some pretty hard turns on steep slopes.  That said, there was a lot of wind transport happening throughout the day.  Anyone hitting the back country in the Steven's Pass area over the next few days would do well to evaluate wind loading very carefully.

All in all one of my best in-bounds days ever.  A big dump at Steven's on a weekday is truly one of life's finer pleasures.

Also, props to WSDOT for doing a great job keeping US2 open.

This is such a big total that somebody had to answer your post.
It's great to hear about such an excellent day. No more phony La Nina now, eh. Was it light enough to turn anywhere, or did it ever stop you in your tracks?
My wife and I have weekday passes at Stevens that are good weekends after February. Yay!

Was it light enough to turn anywhere, or did it ever stop you in your tracks?

It was definitely light enough to turn anywhere. That said, two feet of snow is a lot of snow even when it's light. I got stuck about three times during the eighteen runs or so. Each time it was when I found myself in an area of three-foot drifts on lesser slopes.

It looks like temps stayed much lower today at Steven's than at Crystal (easterly flow?) Doesn't look like Stevens got above 25 degrees while Crystal was at 33 for an hour. Should be another good day at Steven's tomorrow especially if they get the snow they are expecting tonight.

It really did snow 23"! Here's our video from the last two days.

vimeo.com/20547807