December 29, 2002, Heather Ridge (Stevens Pass)

Great skiing on the east facing slopes off Heather Ridge yesterday. There was about 6" of fresh Cascade powder on top of what seemed to be a stable base.

Phil, Matt, Russ, Charles, and I skied a run in the trees at the south end of the slope to check conditions and shortly after starting our climb back up, found a nice track left by previous skiers to follow. At the top as we prepared for the next run, Julie and John caught up
to us from having skied the open slopes further north.
We all made a few more descents in the great snow (great except for the final slide alders and tight young evergreens at the bottom of our run, near the "road" back to Stevens Pass.) As we skinned up for the last run, we met another party of three skiing down.

Despite the "crowds", the area still had plenty of untracked lines left at the end of the day. Snow coverage was much better than what we had found on the north facing slopes beyond Skyline Lake last Sunday, but similar to what we had experienced on the east facing slopes further on that day.

We endured the usual highway 2 traffic home and then heard the sad news about the incident in Cement Basin.

There are some photos from this trip here.