Turns All Year year-round skiing                 Year-round skier:  Chris Cass

How I got started skiing year-round:  Primarily caved-in to peer pressure from fellow skiers Kam and Skip who also introduced me to the turns-all-year website. Criteria for what counts as a ski trip:  Linking at least 2 consecutive turns (1 right, 1 left) on a slope (snow, ice, sand, rocks, twigs, etc.). Biggest threat to my streak:  Low summer snowpack and/or long drive to get to sand dunes. Type of equipment I use:  Randonnee gear. As I learned to downhill ski at an early age, I decided to stick with the fixed heel system when I picked-up backcountry skiing. Strategy for skiing through the low season:  Skiing relic snow patches (sometimes on bullet-proof ice) while dodging rocks, streams, etc. Worst and best backcountry ski trips:  Worst: Nearly freezing my hands off in a blizzard on Rainier and having to borrow extra gloves from Skip, then skiing down in Òzero-visibilityÓ conditions.    Best: Hard to pick, but some of the more memorable trips have involved car-to-car day outings with long ski carries and significant elevation gain followed by nice corn snow descents such as Mt. Pugh (north couloir, elevation hiked: 5,300Õ/skied:~1,200Õ); Mt. Hood (Sunshine route, elevation gained ~6,700Õ/skied ~4,500Õ), Mt. Baker (Easton route, elevation gained ~7,800Õ /skied ~7,500Õ , Sahale Peak (elevation gained ~6,100Õ/skied ~ 5,000Õ, etc.). Skiing activities in the past year:  Too many to recall, some photo highlights are posted here.

www.turns-all-year.com