April 25, 2010, - ONP Hurricane Hill

My buddy "Two Buck" Chuck has always gotten up early to ski with me easterly of the PS - so for once I decided to return the favor and ski in ONP.  We decided to head to Hurricane Hill, starting out at the visitor center at the top of the road.  We followed a road under snow to a ridge and traversed the icy traverse - finally arriving on a southwest rib of Hurricance Hill.  Up to the top and found the summit.

We skied the back bowl, NW facing slopes of the ridge - and actually it wasn't too bad - the run could be 1,000 feet long but the snow became mash potatoes about 800 feet down.  We did another run from the ridge and the mash potatoes line had moved up a few hundred feet.  The snow was a fresh 3-4 inches on top of a really strong crust, but nothing had avalanched in recent days. 

As we headed out we skied from the summit down a line to the Wolf Creek Basin which would be an awesome run with full snow.  As we headed back to the parking areas we could see a set of tracks down the front side of Hurricnae Hill, they had a fantastic run I'm sure on SW facing slopes - this would be a great ski in winter, lots of options with some really long runs - well worth the ferry ride over.