February 18, 2005, Mazama Ridge

Spent a beautiful sunny Friday down at Mt. Rainier. We traversed out towards the falls from paradise, but conditions were pretty wind scoured so we descended down a nicely protected (but fairly thinly covered) glade to the base of Mazama ridge. Climbed up into the bowl on the East side which had a perfect 5-6" of soft fluffy stuff. yo-yo'd all over the place, and despite the sun things didn't get too wet. The new snow was well bonded to the old crust. Things were a bit icy undernearth on purely north facing stuff but not bad. Unfortunately all the soft light snow on west facing slopes early in the day had heated and refrozen into nasty sun crust. Getting back to the road was... harrowing! Great day to be out with hardly a soul around...