November 24th, 2012, Mt Baker + sidecountry

After hunkering down on Friday the 23rd, checking out lots or precip on the the telemetry with precious few new inches,, I resigned myself to still head up early on Saturday as things seem to be at least not rain.

What a surprise. The ski area had packed in quite a bit of base since opening day on Wednesday the 21st. Skies were bright blue, groomers were at least two cats wide, and surface conditions were kind of a couple of new over a mix of soft and refrozen but-not-bullet-proof snow. All the lifts and most of the mountain, minus the lift line under chair 5 seemed to be open. They had flipped many of the rope lines guarding the steeps to open, of particular interest Pan Face and Cannucks. The frozen tracked out did not appeal, so I stuck on the groomers.

Before they opened at 9:00 AM I did a run on big blueberry with fellow TAY member James Wells; up top it was supportable soft crust with 1-3 new. Very smooth and conducive to big fast GS turns. The crust was a little slicker down toward the bottom, requiring some caution. But, many steep lines were pretty full, avy danger was nil, and skies were blue.

The next few days might be great for tours out of Heather Meadows, like Herman saddle, Herman, etc. Take a whippet.