May 12, 2008, Kendall Knob evening tour

Started from Yellowstone Rd at 5. Snow in abundance. Kendall in general still has great cover. Only a few melting thru spots anywhere, you'd have to try hard to find any meltout that would block a line. General snow conditions were about 1-4" of large-grained high water content mush on the surface, sitting sometimes on a decently consolidating layer but sometimes on even higher water content mush where poles penetrated 3'+. Not bad for skinning so long as avoided steep sidehills, made good time. Mostly cloudy with cloud layer hanging around at about 5K, making it unappealing to continue past knob to Kendall Pk slopes, so I tried a few laps. The first 2 laps were both kinda blah. Despite being dead opposite vantages (NE, then SW) each slope started with a trap crust from quick refreeze of the mush's top, then transitioned instantly to max depth glop with a strong need to slide. It was literally a space of 2 turns between "damn, thank god I'm out of that crust" and "uhhhh, that turn is gonna slide the slope out under me, whoa!".  Resulting slides were slow enough to not be alarming even on such few steep and short rolls as Kendall Knob has, but this wouldn't be good stuff to encounter on a mandatory 40deg slope.

By far best run was the last, starting at almost 8PM. That 5K cloud deck had lifted in several directions and I even had partial view of Rainier, plus pretty near-sunset light coming through a couple of cloud layers from over Denny. I stuck with my first ascent route along the ridge, and on top part the crust under was stronger and mush on top thinner, so turns were a reasonable facsimile of spring conditions. Lower, the mush was definitely mush and not corn. but still skied surprisingly well on the 15-25 degree slopes. If this mush went through some more refreezing, it would make a good corn layer, but I fear the upcoming weather is going to thrash it (as well as all other snow surfaces in WA below 10K ... we'll see ...)

Arrived with plenty of light to Yellowstone road again where I was welcomed back into civilization by copious piles of dog poop and ample beer bottles scattered everywhere along the parking along the road. Ah, springtime on Snoqualmie Pass!