February 16, 2005, Silver Basin

I've been reading reports and otherwise taking advantage of this site for awhile now and thought it was about time come out of the woodwork and submit a report for others.

Wednesday the 16th my girlfriend and I drove up to Crystal, arriving in the parking lot at the crack of noon.  Pretty thin at the base, with a lot of rocks either poking through or dug up by the cats.  Coverage was adequate at the top of chair four so chair nine and Green Valley should be fine for the weekend, although who knows how much longer.  Exterminator was bare rock and dirt.  Continued into Silver Basin on a VERY well used skin track / boot pack.  Upper part of the basin appeared quite wind scoured which was expected so we headed to party knoll, shortcutting past a party of about fifteen that had skinned up the center of the bowl.  Said brief hellos to a fellow that was trying to get the group over to where we were going, so we picked up the pace.  The snow conditions in the bottom of the basin were quite variable, going from 6-8" of powder to 1-2" of very soft slab over 6" unconsolidated to hard supporting crust in a matter of a dozed yards.  Descending on the edge of and through the thin trees was quite nice with the soft slab conditions prevailing.  It was, however, difficult to pick a clean line because of the copious tracks already there.  Never bothered to dig a pit because all aspects had obviously been "stability tested" by numerous skiers before us.

Figuring it wasn't worth skinning back up after the large party behind us had its way with the remaining fresh we headed down and to the right to a small slope to the east of Hen Skin Lakes.  Here we found the best conditions, with 8-10" of loose cascade powder and only a few tracks before us.  Headed down at about 3:30, picking our way down chair four.  Skiers left was doable to just before the bottom of the half pipe where it becomes an impassible rock garden.  Luckily it is possible to cut through the half pipe to skiers right for the remainder.  Only felt a couple of rocks and couldn't distinguish those hits from previous scratches when I looked at my bases so all in all, a successful outing.  Arrived at the Naches by 4:30.