Stevens 1/11 Free Refills

Best day of the year by far, a legitimate powder day. It was like Tuesdays blizzard had a stepchild only much better behaved. Less wind, snowing much harder and a lot better quality snow. We did almost all off piste skiing with a few areas of total untracked and lots of cut up tracked but it didn't seem to matter with the cutup because the snow was so good. It was another one of those days where things kept getting better and better. You could come back to a place you had skied an hour before and have a hard time finding your previous tracks. It snowed a good foot in the time we were skiing. No bad lift lines and the visibility was manageable. All the lifts were open when we got there. The backside and Bigger Chief closed early, but we had already quit skiing by then.

Now for the bad part WSDOT closed the pass in both directions just as we were starting to leave. They gave no estimated time for reopening as they were doing avalanche work. Back to the lodge we went. Unfortunately the bar was packed and had a waiting list so we found some places to sit in the lodge and got a beeper for the bar. We finally got in the bar and after about a two hour total weight they open the Pass. We milled around for a while and then got in a miles long string of traffic that continued for about 50 miles and took about two hours to do the 50 miles. Even with all that it was still a most excellent day of skiing.

agree, and we didn't start till Noon. Jupiter, Kehrs(under chair) and Skyline were all super fun and our usual 45 min to LW was 1:15