February 27, 2005, muir snowfield/paradise glacier

Ran into some of the usual TAY folks at rainier yesterday, Ron and Snoslut.  Started the day thinking about trying the chute, but when the clouds rolled in, I figured that it would be a hard, bumpy ride so we looked for other options (given Eric's report, I guess I should headed over to the chute afterall).
At about 8500ft we hopped the rocks between the snowfield and the paradise glacier and started looking for a southeast facing exposure that might've had a bit more solar cookin' to soften things. We started sking the fall line towards the lower glacier around 7700ft and had suprisingly good conditions, 4-6" of chunky but soft spring-ish snow that was easy to carve once the slope increased a bit.  Within spitting distance of the getting to the lower paradise, I thought I had made the bonehead move of cliffing us out...but after a few minutes of snooping around we found a small chute that let us sneak through the last set of rockbands.  Cruised across the flats and skinned up to Golden Gate for one last run to the car.  The snow in Edith Creek was great, as long as you didn't dwell on just how sadly thin the snowpack is right now.