December 20, 2003, Mount Catherine

Itching to get out somewhere in the backcountry today (despite reports of rising snow levels, for what fun is powder snow anyway :D) Daniel Tomko and I headed up toward Mt. Catharine via  approach up and over the un-opened Summit East ski area and across the Mill Creek basin.  Upon crossing over Snocrummy Pass on the drive up, we were a bit optimistic as there was some fresh slush on the road at the pass...but hopes of fresh snow were quickly quelled upon finding ~1-inch of rain-soaked snow atop an easily breakable crust in the Mill Creek Basin. Fresh snow was visible on the trees on the upper few hundred feet of Mt. Catharine, but it wasn't enough to inspire us to proceed much farther.  Entering the trees, from the clear-cut on the NW side of Mt. Catherine, while enjoying the light rain, we scrapped plans of going to the upper mountain and instead skinned a short distance up through the trees to the top of the clear cut.  A quick pit at ~3,700' elev. on the NW side of Mt. Catherine (top of the clearcut) revealed that fantastic thin layer of rain-soaked snow over a ~1-inch thick crust, snow beneath that crust became notably denser with depth down to another thin crust at approx. 3 feet deep.
The snow coverage was great in the clear cut, all things considered, but the skiing left much to be desired...it was probably some of the best "flailing" I've experienced in quite some time  ;D.
Upon reaching the groomed road near Mill Creek, after our fabulous ~300 vertical feet of "flailing", we skinned back "in-bounds" to Summit East and yo-yo'd the groomed run beneath the yet unopened chairlift a couple of times....Making the most of a bad snow day: the "un-tracked" grommer was pretty nice and fast!  :D