April 5, Red Mountain (Snoqualmie)

Jaakko, Rob, Damon and myself headed up to Red Mountain. Ran into a couple of tele skiers who were kind enough to break trial. There was a lot of variation in depth of the new snow (~3"-7"). Like others have reported there was a crust that was breakable in other areas but bomber on the open faces. We all had issues skinning up with the snow just sliding out from underneath us. Rob and Damon (split boarders) were having the most issues and so didn't make the top. Jaakko and I stopped about a 100ft below the summit after booting up on a spine for another couple hundred feet as the snow was becoming very wind affected. Jaakko turned beautiful lines down the face. I followed and about 200ft down a broke a sluff loose that caught me on the next turn. I managed to stop but it ran out. We worked our way down meeting back up with Rob and Damon. Sluffing seemed to happen on every other turn (southern facing slope at this point) but without incident. Was a great day for being so late in the season.