The Citadel

I would say we are having a really incredible spring season in the Cascades. There is a lot of snow up high and ski quality is still very good. We even seemed to skip mank season. Lately, the weather has been finicky, and if you wait for a splitter day you might never get out! So we've been squinting into computer screens trying to find the short windows to fit our adventures into. This past Sunday Phil, Jon, and I went to the Daniel area. With all the new snow lately we knew we wouldn't be chasing corn. We needed the clouds to preserve the spring cream, but we also needed to be able to see. Tricky. When we got to Peggy's Pond Daniel's East Peak made a brief appearance before being swallowed by the mist. We noticed the Citadel (above Circle Lake) was clearer. It sits east of Daniel, the cloud hogger. So we went about halfway up Daniel's SE ridge and then skied a manky run to Circle Lake. Stoke was a little low. Still, we were out there, so the Citadel it was. The run on the Citadel is NW facing so perhaps the snow would be better. That was our thinking at least. We ski boot scrambled the spicy summit block and found a well preserved register dating back to 1978. Many friend's names were in the there! Cool. The ski down really was a dream. Creamy spring powder hero skiing. We were stoked! We reascended our first, manky run and the enjoyed awesome skiing down the SE ridge to Peggy's Pond, hooting and hollering the whole way. There is a ton of snow on Daniel still. Skiing should be great there into July.