Home > Trip Reports > November 27, 2004, Baker (ski area - closed)

November 27, 2004, Baker (ski area - closed)

11/27/04
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
4874
6
Posted by hankj on 11/27/04 6:58pm
Not sure if this is a BC report or an inbounds report, but headed out of the upper parking lot towards Table Mountain at 8:30am.  Had trouble with a skin (split board) toward Artist's Point, so rode the pitch down to Iceberg Lake.  The snow was dry and there was about  8 inches minimum to a foot and a half drifted in.  Really, really nice snow.

Postholed back "in bounds" up to the top of Pan-dome and rode the pitch toward the base of Chair 6.  Very good up top, bonier on that aspect below but at least 6 inches (to, again, a foot and a half drifted in) everywhere.  Definitely had to ride the fire road to get to the base of 6.

Dried the board and the skins in the sun over lunch (it was a picture postcard beautiful partly cloudy day, 2/3's sun, 1/3 filter sun all day with great visibility).  Skinned to the top of chair 8 and comtemplated Hemisphere or Shuksan's Arm, but some evidence of surface slides up there, and the sound of a big avalanche far across the valley to the North helped me decide to just ride back down next to the banked slalom course.

From the base of 6 again skinned back to the top of Pan Dome and rode a steep part of Pan Face and got cliffed out above the rode to artist's point.  Post-holed most of the way back up and found a better way.

All in all a great day.  The snow was near perfect, and mostly there was plenty of it, particularly above 5000 feet.  It was slightly wind affected, but I only heard a hollow sound underneath me once.  Whilst post-holing I punched through the underlying crust on 1 out of 3 steps.  The snow underneath was highly saturated and not entirely frozen yet.  At the end of the day I didn't see any avalanches or even big sluffs when I surveyed the dozens of tracks around Pan Face and Iceberg Lake, but the avalanche I heard around noon was definitely a biggy.
We were also out and about the artist point area in what turned out to be a glorious bluebird powder day.  We noted about 6 inches of fresh atop an icy, consolidated base.  We yoyo'd the area all day and didn't notice any avy activity except for the normal avy debris around table mountain.  

Also, I'm just trying to get my topography right, but hank did you mean bagley lakes??  I thought iceberg lake was one of the lakes on the south-westish side of herman saddle.   Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Another big backcountry day in the neighborhood, with lots of tracks but lots of untouched powder remaining, lots of blue skies, sunshine and grins.  We traversed through the fresh slide debris on the south face of Table Mountain to the Ptarmigan Saddle area, where (at least) a group of five and another of three seemed to have scattered up and down tracks over a variety of aspects.  Skied a couple of short lines here and there, then skinned up and over the Inner Glacier, exiting down the long run to Bagley Lake and out through the ski area. Skiing was great, although my newly-corpulent self scraped through to the crust once per couple of turns.  

South and southwest faces were very slightly suncrusted, but still nice and dry; northwest through northeast aspects were very fine, with the same 8-16 inches of light powder reported by ultragrrl and hankj covering a strong crust.  The fresh snow seemed mostly unconsolidated and stable (bits of windslab on the ridges), although on steeper slopes there were  many size 1 sluffs kicked off by tree bombs and the like.  Don't know what'll become of the bond at that crust once it begins snowing again.

The ski area was partially open again today, charging $20 for a few green runs and a single blue (so I hear).  Tough to make a case for that, I'd say.  




yeah sorry --

meant Bagley -- never got to iceberg lake due to aforementioned renegade skin.




I skied solo on Sunday, so all I have is a picture of my tracks. As noted above, there was lots of untouched snow. The Artist Point ridgeline, where this was taken, had some wind influenced texture, but the abundant powder was rather remarkable considering that it had rained hard just several days before. A great day to celebrate my first 12 month stretch of teleturns.

We pretty well did the same lap that Mark did, but a day later.  There was snow enough over the crust to bring smiles.  The best stuff was in the shade, where the video cameras hang mute, but sunshine is good, too!


We pretty well did the same lap that Mark did, but a day later.


Thanks for the footage.  Take up the telemark turn and that same snow is suddenly knee-to-thigh deep (and all the slopes 5 degrees steeper).

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november-27-2004-baker-ski-area-closed
hankj
2004-11-28 02:58:22