April 14, 2002, Nordic Pass area, Snoqualmie Pass

The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Friday night what a lousy forecast, all day Saturday the same with mass e-mailing, phone calls and contingincy plans for Sunday. Even a co-comiseration e-mail from Italy from ski friend Oddo, who is suffering from desert sand from Africa being blown on their snow. "Good thing we don't have desert sand or it would have been in our forcast as well", I thought. Dorothea and I were going to stay at my house, practice tying knots and work on our bikes as backup. 4am Sunday still no promised snow and cold, but 82 mph gusts at Snoqualmie Pass (130 mph gusts at White Pass). Dorothea shows up at 7 and a little snow is starting up at Snoqualmie. Forecast is for Winter Storm, high winds, 4-12" new snow and 2000' freezing level. The forecast was 2 hours late, we hustled and were only 15 min late for meeting with Ron and Charles bottom of closed Silver Fir lift.

Ok now we have snow and quite a bit of wind. We skinned up a bit above Nordic Pass and lost the wind in the big trees. 2-3" of light fluff on a suprisingly smooth solid base. Highly skiable and getting better as we left. The wind lessened quite a bit and more snow accumulated. By the time we got back to Silver Fir runs, 4-6" new then maybe 8" and most of it unskied. Gee we flat tore it up with out as much as one pang of guilt. Ran into Jeff Spann skiing solo and pressed ganged him into our party. A very good day considering mid-April and high wind forcast. Say if anybody happens to run into a pair of clear bifocals up there. Well maybe find is a better word. They belong to me!

Photos from this trip can be viewed at http://www.turns-all-year.com/goldhome/hp25/index.html

Robie