March 21, 2004, MRNP

What a glorious day in the PNW!!  My niece and her fiancee had arrived from Florida and wanted to experience a backcountry outing with "Aunt J"  ;D.  Since both of them had done some snowboarding in the past, my friends and I had thought a nice "easy" trip to the Mazama back bowl would offer the perfect assortment of varied terrain choices from low aspects to the more challenging of what we call "911".  There were 6 of us, Stephan, Jerry, Maureen, Darryl, Ron and myself to help assist our new backcountry boarders, Heidi and Moe, with their outing.  Arriving at the Paradise parking with clear skies, 51 degrees and no wind.  We all 'saddled' up and headed for the adventure, arriving at the back bowl, with the sun warmed, early season corn.  We showed Heidi and Moe the easier of the aspects for their first run while the rest of the gang headed for 911.  The snow was very stable and was well bonded to a strong base.  Our first run was superb, and a good time was had by all.  Stephan, being an outstanding boarder, has taken up AT skiing for a different change of pace.  On his second time out ever on skis, he manages to master the art of the "wild" snow on his new equipment.  While Ron and I wondered why it took us so long.  We had our way with the back bowl, changing aspects as the earlier sun baked slopes over ripened.  Heidi and Moe got more familiar with the bowl and made their way around, enjoying the more challenging slopes as the day went on. We climbed out of the bowl, only to see the delight in the kids as they knew this would be their last climb up of the day and they would have one long run back to the lower Paradise road and only one more short hike back up to the upper parking.  The recent snow from last week was well bonded to a bombproof layer.  Except for surface sloughing off of steep rocks and cliffs, there were no noted slides anywhere. Ron should have some photos for viewing shortly.   8)