TR Replies
Good to hear the Snoqualmie area is starting to get enough snow to make some decent turns in the bc.
Thanks for the report, Jim.
Thanks for the report, Jim.
Actually, the North slope(s) were somewhat windpacked.
We skied down the Union Creek side finding a somewhat crusty surface. Yes, one did push through - yet the snow quality was quite better on the Bullion Basin side. The moderate laoding of light snow from the North , I would infer, should keep the South slopes quite nicely as long we have low temperatures.
hs
We skied down the Union Creek side finding a somewhat crusty surface. Yes, one did push through - yet the snow quality was quite better on the Bullion Basin side. The moderate laoding of light snow from the North , I would infer, should keep the South slopes quite nicely as long we have low temperatures.
hs
Nothing meaningful to add to that Relay Tower route, but if misery loves company then it sounds like I got lost in the exact same spot you did the last time I tried it (several years ago). I spotted the tower from the other side at the Silver Fir lift last week and it looks pretty straight forward from there... ???
I'll try it again sometime with a better map...
Glad you found some good stuff at Kendall.
-Tom
I'll try it again sometime with a better map...
Glad you found some good stuff at Kendall.
-Tom
Wow! Where exactly was that slab? Are you talking above Edith Basin? Or the ridge to the west of Sluiskin?We skied Mazama Sat and Sun. On Sat we went up to the back bowl (standard route to right of creek, switch back up) and skied it 3 times then the front twice from Sluiskin Creek halfway across. Wonderful snow! Wind-affected powder, eminently skiable, very stable. Sunday we skied the front all over (4x for me) then over to the first steep glade above P...
I'd agree with that. Looks like we're into some good skiing conditons the next few days.....
Darin
Darin
Yeah, the difference between Friday and Saturday was astonishing. Saturday was as good as Friday was bad.
Hey...no fair! You drag me out into a nasty storm and I just about catch hypothermia, then you go home and have a great day in the Olympics. But really, I'm glad to hear that conditions have improved.
MikeyB - I think the telemetry data was actually shown to be pretty accurate. It showed that while we were there the temp stayed in the 29-32 degree range and about 2.0" of water equivalent came down. I think those two things explain our wetness. The telemetry shows that it didn't start cooling off until about 6pm the day we left. Yes, we got out, and I'm glad we weren't 5 miles in!
Darin - hard, even if not hardcore. But it was good to be reminded about how all that frozen wat...
Darin - hard, even if not hardcore. But it was good to be reminded about how all that frozen wat...
Well, as my friend Nick would say, "at least you got out!" Are we to conclude that the telemetry at Paradise is unreliable? Thanks for the blow by blow.
Charles,
Wow, that story sounds hardcore! I give you an A for your efforts. And good work on digging the car!
Darin
Wow, that story sounds hardcore! I give you an A for your efforts. And good work on digging the car!
Darin
It didn't run far - just to the bottom of the ~30' steepest part right at the top of Mazama Ridge. It piled up on a little shelf with trees. Only the bottom half of the slab actually slid to the bottom; the top half slid a few inches as a unit but then stopped, poised above the slightly steeper bottom part of the slope and leaving a crack at its top edge that went ~30' across the slope.
It was pretty clear that conditions were not too stable. Just skinning up Mazama toward camp we could s...
It was pretty clear that conditions were not too stable. Just skinning up Mazama toward camp we could s...
Charles Good report about whats going on up there with all this snow. Was thinking it might have been cooler despite the telemetry readings. How far did the slab seem to run that you setoff. Did you see many other skiers out and any other signs of instability??.
Guess it worked that I skipped the trip, course I've been busy after the phone call wed night "your boats taken on water you better come down to look at it" !!
CharlesW
Guess it worked that I skipped the trip, course I've been busy after the phone call wed night "your boats taken on water you better come down to look at it" !!
CharlesW
yup, that was us :) the 'excitable' ones who were hooting and hollering at the end of the run.
Lots of great terrain in that bowl...can't believe I haven't made it back into there before.
Lots of great terrain in that bowl...can't believe I haven't made it back into there before.
Sounds like a great trip, zenom.
Nice report, too.
Thanks for posting it.
Nice report, too.
Thanks for posting it.
Unfortunately they were not devoid of sitzmarks, however ;)
Yup, think so. We skinned up to below a boarder's jump just as 4 or 5 took turns going down to the creek. Your tracks had less sitzmarks than ours!
Hum, looking at the telemetry data from Sunday, it is hard to detect any rain up at Stevens. The crust was very, very slight, I noticed it only when using my hand to cut down through the side of a smooth snow pit wall. I didn't really mean rain before, this implies heavier precipitation. I was imagining more of a mist/rime, a little precipitation that would accumulate on the ground when the relative humidity is near 100%. This was on the north side of the ridge and I don'...
I was at Yodelin the day before (Sunday Feb 16th) from about 8:30-4pm and I didn't see a drop of rain. It snowed in the morning and by noonish it had cleared and was sunny and
very warm. Could the crust perhaps have been from a change in temperature? That or it rained very early in the morning.
very warm. Could the crust perhaps have been from a change in temperature? That or it rained very early in the morning.
Regine caught up with me to bypass me to do 1st tracks in 9-1-1 (she usually lets me do some ski cuts first); I let her ski all the way down and then layed tracks to skier's left of hers; lots of fun, just used 3 pins, no cables. Were you guys the group of four that skied down next (with the excitable young woman)? :) :)abc
Wow. Eight of you.
Quite a gaggle of skier/campers you had there, Bud.
It sounds lie you're really getting the lay of the land up there, too. Good on ya.
Quite a gaggle of skier/campers you had there, Bud.
It sounds lie you're really getting the lay of the land up there, too. Good on ya.
I was up camped with seven buddies of mine on Mazama Ridge for all three days of the long weekend....had a great time...vastly different ski conditions each day. Saturday the steeps were unbreakable crust, really stable, lower angle had mixture of a couple inches over 'zipper' crust. Sunday was much better, steep lines on Mazama still stable until late-afternoon when the hasty pits I dug started to show some isolated pockets of windslab and occationally poorly bonded new snow to old. Nice to ru...
Ron ,I bet we did run into them. There were 2 guys we met crossing just beyond the creek in Edith basin. Was that You Don? We were going do that loop but Ron J got distracted by beer and cheeseburgers in visitor center! We were up there around 3pm and stayed till 4.
Andy,
Proly the reason you missed us was because of our unusually spartan and athletic, secret lunch stop (burgers and beer at the VC ;D ).
Proly the reason you missed us was because of our unusually spartan and athletic, secret lunch stop (burgers and beer at the VC ;D ).
Nice Report, Kenji.
Good to see you're still out there doing your "ironman" tours :)
Good to see you're still out there doing your "ironman" tours :)
where wuz you guys? We skied, west low anle slopes of Mazama Ridge, then 9-1-1 the steep southeast-facing slopes in the back bowl, and finally the steep west facing slopes above Paradise Valley Road (twice)? Couldn't get anything to sluff even with a party of 4! Saw Bud on the front of Mazama; lots of people camped above the back bowl skiing the bowl. Went up today, but the gate hadn't opened by 11:30 and they said it could be an hour or more more (broken plow); so...
Funny we didn't run into you guys, Don.
That's a nice loop you did.
That's a nice loop you did.
The conditions were good, but some folks hit dirt when they dug, just make sure to probe some good spots up on the ridgeline. The layers were obvious, as there was a rain crust about 1 foot down, and a hard consolidated layer under that for about 2 feet. I am referring to north facing aspects only. Have fun
Allen,
Thanks for the info. I have yet to buy a digital, I will consider this one.
Good Turns, Darin
Thanks for the info. I have yet to buy a digital, I will consider this one.
Good Turns, Darin
Scott:
How were the cave digging conditions? My son and I plan to camp out there next weekend. Seems like it would be hard to dig after all the freeze-thaw we've had.
Rick Randall
How were the cave digging conditions? My son and I plan to camp out there next weekend. Seems like it would be hard to dig after all the freeze-thaw we've had.
Rick Randall
thanks!
i'm amazed at my Canon's ability to shoot directly into the sun, and expose everything right. I'd highly recommend it. It also starts fast, and is not too much of a battery hog, like a lot of digitals. It's a Canon Powershot A40, and you can get em under $300 these days.
It's also small, so I'll actually carry the thing.
i'm amazed at my Canon's ability to shoot directly into the sun, and expose everything right. I'd highly recommend it. It also starts fast, and is not too much of a battery hog, like a lot of digitals. It's a Canon Powershot A40, and you can get em under $300 these days.
It's also small, so I'll actually carry the thing.
I like that last photo! Very nice. Well done.
Good Turns, Darin
Good Turns, Darin
I'm going to break the picture rules once, since i figured out how to do this. I liked this picture from Sunday, nearing the saddle on Unicorn. It was blowing, cold, and sunny, and this picture represents all that:
Yeah, it has to be on the net somewhere. Then you put the url between the codes that you can generate with the picture button above the message box in the "post reply" dialog.
If you like you can post them for free on msn where I post mine. You can even add them to my "Tatoosh" trip if you like... you just have to register or have a msn pasport or something like that. You'll figure it out; I did :)
If you like you can post them for free on msn where I post mine. You can even add them to my "Tatoosh" trip if you like... you just have to register or have a msn pasport or something like that. You'll figure it out; I did :)
I think Foss was our original plan, if there was one, and it had tracks all over it. we came back too late to do anything extra. we skiied right back down the main gully from Unicorn. we managed to get away from the crowds, but the skiing looked better on the south side of Pinnacle, at least from a distance it did.
to post a picture do you have to have it on a website already? If not, I'd like to know how to do it. couldn't find how in the FAQ section.
Here's some of the best...
to post a picture do you have to have it on a website already? If not, I'd like to know how to do it. couldn't find how in the FAQ section.
Here's some of the best...
You're right, Allen, it was a good day for fatties. I think all of us were the poachers I was talking about ;)
Sounds like you ran into similar conditions to ours. I was wondering what Foss was like. Did you do any runs there as you passed by?
Did you happen to take the bowl nw of Foss back down to the road?
Sounds like you ran into similar conditions to ours. I was wondering what Foss was like. Did you do any runs there as you passed by?
Did you happen to take the bowl nw of Foss back down to the road?
Sounds nice Greg.
Good Turns, Darin
Good Turns, Darin
hey ron,
hope we're not the poachers you're referring to. i didn't know where we were going til we got there. we ended up getting away from it all over on Unicorn. The lower chute was getting some wind deposited snow near the top, but it seemed to be well adhered to the old snow layer. the upper snow field to the saddle was pretty good skiing, extremely variable, but never too bad.
good day for those fatties, hope you enjoyed yours.
allen
hope we're not the poachers you're referring to. i didn't know where we were going til we got there. we ended up getting away from it all over on Unicorn. The lower chute was getting some wind deposited snow near the top, but it seemed to be well adhered to the old snow layer. the upper snow field to the saddle was pretty good skiing, extremely variable, but never too bad.
good day for those fatties, hope you enjoyed yours.
allen
Spring skiing is happening now, apparently, on the right aspects. I also found the tree peed cucka in the Snoqualmie forest, but open slopes were pretty darned good, though you obviously wanna catch sunny slopes while they're soft. By the way, there's a pretty fun avalanche path on the west side of the second Kendall Knob that I almost went to check out this weekend (Volken describes how to get there in his book for anyone who is interested in this spot) - I bet that would offer pretty nice skii...
That's funny,
we were camped out in snow caves for an avy course right below where your son was. We had some great turns this morning after we traversed under table mountain and out and around by the Herman/Table saddle and dropped down into the basin for some great north facing powder. Although it was skied out, there was still some great terrain to cut up. Good Times
we were camped out in snow caves for an avy course right below where your son was. We had some great turns this morning after we traversed under table mountain and out and around by the Herman/Table saddle and dropped down into the basin for some great north facing powder. Although it was skied out, there was still some great terrain to cut up. Good Times
Zap,
Well are we going to have a ski outing sometime or what? If you still live in the Skoog's neighborhood say hello to them from me!
Darin
Well are we going to have a ski outing sometime or what? If you still live in the Skoog's neighborhood say hello to them from me!
Darin
Silas,
The warm rain late last week also reached Holden but the snow that followed the rain in western WA never reached Holden. We had sunny days with "unbreakable crust". Came back early.
Zap
Darin,
It's me.
The warm rain late last week also reached Holden but the snow that followed the rain in western WA never reached Holden. We had sunny days with "unbreakable crust". Came back early.
Zap
Darin,
It's me.
Zap,
This isn't Zap who lives near/on the west side of Lake Sammamish is it? -Or used to?
Darin
This isn't Zap who lives near/on the west side of Lake Sammamish is it? -Or used to?
Darin
What happened to your Holden trip or is it coming up?
I think this will work for photos site: http://photomail.photoworks.com/sharing/album.asp?Key=1~FQQ4aBru.cKAsm25i78ImY.fa1beMK1Q4xG4szv8o9mlQpAi9BmvCoYshFHj9OZG
Thanks for all of the useful info, and glad you found good skiing.
Mark, thanks, that helps a lot. We will add that to the (limited) list of possible destinations.
Charles, don't have time to write up a report, but there's about 8 inches of powder reasonably well bonded to a strong crust on sun-sheltered slopes up here (i.e., Mt. Baker Highway). Should last until at least Thursday. Anything below about 4000 feet and anything which gets any sun at all has crust on it. Base at 4000 feet is about 6 feet, deepening with increased altitude.
Hope that helps. Enjoy.
Mark
Hope that helps. Enjoy.
Mark