May 19, 2001, Camp Muir, Mt. Rainier NP

The warning signs are as follows: I'm skinning up a long approach on a popular backcountry route, in what seem like perfectly reasonable snow conditions. Those who got going earlier than I are already starting back down, skiing, snowboarding, butt-glissading and walking. Some of the walkers are, very mysteriously, carrying their skis. What are all these beginners doing way up here, anyway? They're so clumsy, so hesitant, so lacking in technique and confidence! I'll be the best skier out here! Eventually I top out and the moment of truth arrives: four quick turns and then SPLAT! my tips burrow under an unseen lump of ice and I crater hugely. There are bumps and waves in the snowpack that I never noticed on the way up, and icy sections mixed unpredictably with dense wet glop of varying depth. I get more cautious, and start looking for skiable pitches that are out of sight of the long line of climbers still headed uphill. Then the fog closes in, and I get even more cautious in my skiing€”even more uncertain and clumsy€”and I'm forced to move back on top of the uptrack, where postholers and butt-sliders have created an even wider variety of hazards. After several thousand feet I start looking surreptitiously at my altimeter, wondering if it'll be over soon. Eventually I get the rhythm appropriate to this particular form of snow, the clouds lift and the air gets thicker as I lose elevation. By the time I get to the car I'm skiing "normally" again. That's when I ! discover I left the headlights on when I arrived in the morning. Muir was intermittently socked in and gloriously sunny all day. If there's corn up there I couldn't find it: merely a lot of recent wet snow in the slop stage of metamorphosis, heavily wind-affected, a couple of hundred postholers and perhaps a dozen skiers and boarders. The real challenge was the wind, gusting to 60 or 70 or so up on the snowfield, and from unpredictable directions. This made it a bit awkward climbing up, and genuinely perplexing skiing down, since just as I got a turning rhythm going this giant hand would clobber me from one direction or another. Holding warp speed seemed to help (as it helped also for the wet snow), but this becomes difficult to justify on aging knees. I didn't venture too far left or right, being worried about the visibility and my own unfamiliarity with the route, but I did take some steep rolls to about 45 degrees steepness with only minor sluffing. The best skiing was on Muir Snowfield itself down to about 8500 feet, well off to skiers right, where there should be good corn in a couple of days.

Enjoy.

Mark