www.turns-all-year.com Year round Washington snowboarding and telemark skiing photos Turns All Year: Previous Home Page Galleries This is a gallery of photos which appeared on the Turns All Year home page in the past. Thumbnail images on this page can be clicked to view the full-sized photos, and lead into a slide show sequence for the gallery. The images are from a backcountry snowboarding and skiing trip to the Muir snowfield on the south side of Mt. Rainier in Washington state to do some October turns. Strong winds had blown away most of the thin cover of new snow, but a fairly nice, short run was found. The gallery includes both telemark skiing and snowboarding photos. List Galleries            < Older  Browse Galleries  Newer >

Turns All Year CD-ROM The complete version of this photo gallery is now available on Turns All Year CD-ROM. Below you can view thumbnail photos from this gallery. Turns All Year CD-ROM contains over 180 photo galleries, containing more than 3200 full-sized photos, from backcountry skiing and snowboarding trips in the Pacific Northwest.

from November 4, 2002: Year-round desperation, October 31, 2002, Muir Snowfield, Mt. Rainier, Washington Lower Muir snowfield, Mt. Rainier, Washington Ian snowboarding Jeremy riding bad snow tele Paul Ian snowboarding Paul and Mt. Adams Ian riding the Muir snowfield Jeremy, Washington snowboarding Paul Charles on Mt. Rainier, Washington Charles Nisqually Glacier, Washington Photos by Ian Nicholson and Charles Eldridge

Associated trip report: "Procrastinators, Inc. (Paul and I) went up to Paradise to try to get October turns for months 73 and 71, respectively. On the drive up, it could be seen that there was some new snow on the Muir, but not the even, white coating we had hoped for. Sunny, but cold and windy at the parking lot, and from there the nearby meadows looked devoid of any snow. We soon found, however, that the paved/gravel paths had almost continuous snow, from 1-4", which made the hiking in ski boots reasonable. The summer trail up Panorama Point was still in use, although somewhat drifted in. Above Panorama Point we ran into Ian and Jeremy, two adventurous boarders embarking on year-round skiing streaks. We all hiked the main route up above Pebble Creek to about 7800', eyeing a narrow strip (10 to 20' wide) of smooth drifted-in new snow along skiers right on the permanent snow. We stopped at the bottom of what, with good coverage, is the first big roll going up the Muir, now just rocks and some nasty looking patches of old snow. We had some lunch at our high point, then started the big run, which at first was gentle, with areas of new snow but a lot of dirty, hard, irregular old snow - not really much fun at all. When we got over to the right edge of the snowfield, the somewhat steeper strip of new snow proved to be fairly nice to ski - firmly wind-packed, with a few spots of thick breakable wind crust. So nice, in fact, that Paul and I side-stepped back up to do the bottom, best 50' again! At 400-500' of vertical, this trip was below the threshold for what I have considered a countable ski trip in the past, but it is clear that most people are having to relax their standards this fall (except for animals like David and Amar). I definitely would not have been out skiing this day if it had not been my last chance to get October turns, and although the skiing was far from good, it would have been much worse if there had not been any new snow. Plus, with no reason to keep skiing all day, we got back home in time to go trick-or-treating." Charles

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