Feb. 10th: White Pass

What a difference a "little" snow makes! SBGraham and I felt that there may be the possibility to ski some powder today, and with little money to donate to Xtal, we decided on going to White to participate with their midweek crowd. We also felt the need to ride lifts today as that indulgence hasn't been consumed lately. White Pass is great mid-week and mid-storm, actually the vast majority of times I've been there have been for that excat reason. So today presented the perfect opportunity to ski Great White! Left Oly in snow flurries. Snowed pretty much the whole way up there. We arrived with or goals set on skiing a half day (cause I'm cheap, WP is cheap, and the snow wasnt really suposed to kick in till late morning. Got there around 10:30 and skinned a run across the highway by the nordic center to wait for half day time. There was anywhere from 3-5 in of the light stuff on top of some pole penetrable crust. Skinning was awful. Got our passes and headed up the only real lift, and found a plethora of differeing powder conditions. Deep, not so deep, crust, and bottomless areas were all encountered several times per run. Towards the end of the afternoon the snow was puking and filling in tracks everywhere. Faceshots and blower dominated the afternoon. Mini cornice on my car when we left, although it didnt seem too windy. Powder ......say what? The more the day progresses the better it got, run by run. The crust was almost always present beneath the boot to knee deep stuff. Yeah...It was really good today and you should go tomorrow. No pics, forgot the camera......doh.

probably the most face-shots i've had all year, sadly... the stuff was so light that it rooster-tailed readily, and as another post pointed out, it didn't always cushion the crust underneath... but when it was good, it was damn good!

Went touring into the bc today, shin deep pow, sunny skies, cold temps, should be good tomorrow as well.