April 15, 2010, Mt. Snoqualmie, Phantom Powder

Left the U District at 0430, Alpy parking lot around 0550 (I've taken to driving a touch under the limit to eke better gas mileage out of my Jeep). Debated whether to skin up Alpy or take another route; after reading Rob Gibson's article about the Alpy Patrol's thought process behind limiting skinning (even on closed days), I decided to pick a slope where I wouldn't be in the way if they needed to do any avy control work.

Headed over to start breaking trail up into the woods to the left of the Phantom, and found that someone else had already begun the process and was out of sight. Followed the newly beaten track up through the woods, where sidehilling was occasionally a bit tricky due to the relatively shallow crust in the woods (should've brought the ski crampons), but not too much trouble. Eventually breaking out of the woods onto the upper slopes of Mt. Snoqualmie, I caught up with Greg + dog (Nash), who had kindly provided the skin track. He elected to top out at that point, and I didn't feel the need to push higher, so unskinned and headed over to the top of the Phantom while Greg + dog disappeared down into the woods for a tree run. Snow quality was excellent, with ~11-15" relatively light new April powder on the upper slopes, with what felt like a pretty good bond to the underlying layers. A bunch of faceshots later, I was back at the start of the skin track and elected to take a second lap. Greg + dog zipped past on their second run as I was partway up; in order to get back to Seattle in time for class at UW, I broke off the ascent about 3/4 of the way up the skin track and traversed over to the Phantom for a second lap of goodness. After the second round of faceshots I headed back for the car, and the wisdom of the route choice was confirmed as Alpy patrol promptly began blowing the @!%# out of the slide start zones across the road. Fantastic morning of skiing... no pics, but I recommend going to see it for yourselves, anyway, get it while it lasts!