Ron J's BBQ

Hey Ron!

  Got a chuckle when I was perusing a few web sites and saw this reference to some strange BBQ's up at Sunrise.



  "When the road to Sunrise opens at Mt. Rainier National Park in June, skiers flock from all directions to ski the terrain that's easily accessible from either Sunrise Point (the hair-pin turn) or the Sunrise visitor center.
• Dege Peak is a short 20-minute hike from Sunrise Point. It's a modest 7006 ft. tall peak that offers excellent skiing from its northeast slopes. The longest run from Dege is about 1000 vertical feet, and there are a few other lines from the east ridge of the peak that offer great yo-yo skiing.  Also from the summit you can get a really good view of Mount Rainier.
• In June, when the road to Sunrise opens for the season skiers gathered to carve up the slopes. This event is becoming a tradition among TAY skiers, and after shushing around, everyone gathers for a tailgate party at the Sunrise visitor center parking lot. "

From www.greatgetaways.com/crystalmountain/media/crystal-header.jpg


cw

You're right, Charles, that's pretty funny.
Kinda fun to see TAY getting written up amongst the "regular folks", eh?

And thanks for the recognition.

Unfortunately, any acclaim cast in my direction, while sincerely appreciated, is, unfortunately, woefully off target....
There were lots of "more experience" folks skiing the Sourdough Chutes and Burroughs Mtn before me.  Brent Hostetler and Zap are the first that come to mind, although I'd bet they were not the first. 

And I believe the MadDog (who received her nickname from Tim Place while skiing those chutes) was the first to come up with the idea of converting it to a festival of sorts with the tailgate party/BBQ embellishments.  She may have even went out and bought a new BBQ for the festivities.  I CAN, however, make claim to enthusiastically participating in the concept and bringing copious amounts of libations to make sure it operated smoothly.

A lot of the fun of skiing the Sourdough Chutes is performing for the tourist crowds.  On asunny opening weekend day at Sunrise there's always a plethora of tourists walking the Sourdough Ridge trail.  Invariably when they encounter skiers futzing with their gear at the top of a chute they usually stop to watch the descent.  It is not uncommon to draw a crowd of 20 or 30 to cheer each skier down as if they were in some major Olympic event.  Interestingly, though, they all seem to leave as we start booting back up.  You can almost feel them thinking, "well, now; THAT was really dumb"  :

Zap was the first I heard to tell about one tourist that carefully made his way to the edge of the "abyss", to look down, and then looked at Zap and Jill and said "You're not going to ski that, are you?"  Upon which Zap replied, "Have to -- it's way too steep to walk down".

BTW, Charles, it looks to me like you might have snagged the wrong link.  It looks like the one you want is:
www.greatgetaways.com/crystalmountain/nearby.html