Conditions in the Methow?

I was thinking about heading there in a couple weeks for XC skiing. The grooming report on mvsta.com shows that all the trails are open, but I'm still a little nervous given what this winter has been like. Has anyone been over there?<br>Thanks<br>-Jeremy

Their webcam shows plenty of snow. <br><br><br>www.mvsta.com/viewpic.html

I was there this last weekend Sat-Mon. We stayed at Cassal Hut, skied in via Cow Creek and out via FR 100 (down through the Edelweiss development). It was WARM, temps never went below about 39 at 3700' and we saw a lot of snow loss. That said, the trails were hanging in there (there were bare spots, but nothing you couldn't navigate around) so if the temps drop below freezing this week, and/or they get a little snow, the x-c skiing should still be OK. Off trail tele-touring or AT skiing, on the otherhand ... forget about it.

That top web cam is right at the Sun Mountain lodge and is much higher than the valley trail system. Since there are so many trails up high I would tend to the higher ones but maybe more importantly stay on the south side of the valley where the sunshine is truncated by the hills.<br><br>Alan

I was unwittingly in the frame of that camera on Saturday. You can see the valley has snow and there were people using the valley trails.<br><br>We skied the Sun Mountain/Patterson Lake area which was fine. Off trail there was a thin variable crust covering ~10" of unconsolidated snow. We were in the shade nearly the entire time. We heard more than one person remark that the sun was finally out.<br><br>My theory is that to the northern inland regions the PE was more help than harm. Then chronic fog especially in the valleys kept snow from melting. South facing slopes were noticably more bare. If you need snow therapy head on up!

Thanks for the info everyone. I think we're going to give it a shot.

Just got back from 5 days there. Recommended as long as your expectations are that you'll get some nice exercise on decent although minimal snow, and that any turning you do will be pretty incidental. Last Thu we spent a night in the Gardner Hut, which was a great experience and spending the night makes it much easier to do a pretty thorough survey of the upper Rendesvous trails, which are arguably the nicest in the system due to the lower Lycra factor (can you tell I'm not really much into skating? ) Sunday they got a couple inches of snow, that was a little sticky then on Monday but stickiness could be combatted with some paraffin applied. Those couple inches should help cover up some less pleasant older spring-style surface in at least a few places. Sun Mtn and Mazama trails in good shape, Valley trail up from Browns OK, Valley trail below Browns Farm had a lot of bare spots and you'd be better off going to the higher areas, Rendesvous had some occasional rough spots but was still worth it for getting out of the crowds a little and 98% of the trails up there are good.