February 22, 2004, Rock Mt.

We skied the rock lake bowl from the summit of Rock Mountain down to the lake twice.  There was skiable very thin crust,  wind compressed powder, wind scoured hardpack. Some of the top 3-4 inches was sliding off the firm layer underneath as we skinned up the bowl.   We skied the east and southeast aspects. The west facing was showing a lot of wet snow sloughing.  We left it a little late to head down and the corn that was looking good on the ascent was refrozen into a nice crust.  There was soft snow in the trees up high but as we got lower, we switched to survival skiing/side slipping the last 2000' of nasty inch thick crust and slush to the car.  The main drainage from the lake had running water at 4000' so it's not skiable all the way to the road.    The bowl is almost completely treeless and was worth the effort.