April 18, 2003, Red Mountain, Snoq. Pass

had long wanted to ski the beautiful west face of red, and decided to give it a try, encouraged by the weather report of a couple inches of fresh...which were duly found in the commonwealth basin, along with sunshine, undisturbed silence, and breathtaking scenery. all 45mins away from seattle.

the couple of inches changed to about a foot as we neared the top of red. the clouds rolled in which was just as good, as we were worried about wet snow slides. and we did hear, although not able to see a couple really loud ones coming off the south side of lundin somewhere... skied carefully one at a time and were rewarded with awome turns in slightly heavy snow...managed to kick off a too-large-for-comfort slough in a shallow gully. the temps had gone up by quite a bit by the time we were back in the basin, with the fresh snow in the trees melting and dripping off. we congratulated each other on hitting the weather window just right and on a super fun ski...red is just as good as it looks from the pass!