Feb 4/5, 2012-Mt. Rainier, Cowlitz Rocks camping

Wanting to take advantage of the fine weather by spending the night out, but not wanting to bite off anything particularly committing, Pete and I headed down to Rainier to park ourselves out by Cowlitz Rocks Saturday night. As many have reported, Saturday morning was very, very windy and on the skin up to Cowlitz Rocks we grew a little concerned that not only would we not find anything worth skiing, but our dreams of basking in the sunshine might be squashed by the cold wind as well!

We climbed up to the saddle between the Paradise Glacier and Cowlitz Rocks to get a look at the northeast facing slope off the backside of Cowlitz. It was in the shade at that point and looked better than anything we€™d seen thus far so after a little poking at the snow we ripped the skins and headed down to find surprisingly pleasant turns! The snow was slightly sun-effected, but the crust was not aggressive for the most part and we got a good 800 feet of very decent skiing out of it! We decided our objective for the weekend would be to farm that little slope for all it was worth!

While we were skinning back up, we ran into Jason and Kyle who were doing a three day trip from Paradise to Crystal Mountain.  The wind had died down considerably by the time we got back to the saddle so we pitched our tent on a nice perch facing southwest and soaked in the amazing sunset. After an evening of playing with 30-second night exposures on Pete€™s camera, we awoke to more amazing alpenglow and set off to harvest a few more runs. The morning sun made the previous day€™s crust more compliant, as Pete put it, so the turns were even better! Pete released a tiny little slab-lette on a steep rollover, but otherwise, nothing moved all weekend. After two laps we were ready to pack up and head out. We were a little worried about the quantity and degree of crust we might encounter on the ski out Edith Basin, but we were, again, pleasantly surprised to find all the snow perfectly edgeable and some, dare I say, almost corn-like.

Pics here: https://picasaweb.google.com/113589492689912715272/RainierCowlitzRocks?noredirect=1#