May 29, 2004, Grand Park, Mt. Rainier

This was the second day of our blue tarp car camping/skiing trip (having skied at Glacier Basin the previous day), and Andy and I slept in and then enjoyed a slow morning around camp. After gathering the gear for a waxless ski tour, we drove up FS73 and were stopped by snow about a block from the Eleanor Lake trailhead - no approach hike on this one! The snowpack in the forest at first was low but adequate, with a thin coating of new snow in glades. The sun kept coming out, giving us hope of some warmth and views. The small slope down to Grand Parklet was bare as usual, but was the only carry of the day as we could easily all-terrain ski across the bare grass areas of Grand Parklet. We diverged from the trail route at the unnamed creek and followed it up along the northwest side of Grand Park. The thin layer of new snow made for good climbing with the fishscales, but we got pretty wet from tree drip. We climbed through steeper glades to get into Grand Park itself, and had lunch there, watching snow blowing across the open leads and hoping the views would get better. They didn't, but at least it wasn't raining. We then skied across Grand Park to its southern tip. There was about 2" of new snow in Grand Park, and the striding was fairly slow for the first person because it was pretty wet, but fast for the second and on the way back. We skied glades from near our lunch spot back down to the creek, then the forest along our ascent route to Grand Parklet. This was better than the glades because the smaller amount of new snow allowed it to be fast. With the new snow we saw a lot of critter tracks, including elk, a big cat, and very fresh bear tracks: