February 25-27, 2005, Mazama Ridge, Mt. Rainier

My daughter, who goes by the skiing moniker of Tahoma, and I went up to Mazama Ridge for our annual ski camping trip. This was our seventh year of doing this, having started when Tahoma was five years old. We've gradually increased the difficulty of the trips, but are limited by the fact that Tahoma has never been on downhill skis and doesn't really know how to turn. In addition, she still uses traditional (skinny) XC skis and matching boots.

Overall there was a wide variety of snow conditions. Friday was sunny and warm, with almost-corn in the sun and thick crust in the shade, with a few pockets of dense powder in areas that had not received any sun. We set up camp in an out of the way location on the far side of Mazama Ridge, then toured south down Mazama Ridge. Since Tahoma can't turn, our tours consisted of a series of descending traverses where our speed could be killed on a slight rise. I set the track, Tahoma followed. This actually turned out to be pretty fun (lots of skiing uses only a little vertical), and since we weren't trying to turn, it didn't really matter that there was breakable crust in areas. The dense powder on N-facing slopes was slow and we discovered we could use this to control our speed. I did manage to get in about 10 turns on really nice corn in one spot. Skiing back up to camp we stuck to the eastern edges of glades to stay in the sun and still soft snow, because shaded snow refroze quickly (we used skins to get up to Mazama Ridge, but fishscales for the rest of the trip). With the short days and rapid cooling, we were in the tent by 6:30.

Here's a photo of Tahoma topping out on Mazama Ridge:




On Saturday, we lounged around in the sun on our "morning" snow bench, playing cribbage and waiting for the snow to soften. Then we skied to the top of Mazama Ridge, across the flats, and up the lower Paradise Glacier valley to lunch near the waterfall. There were a whole bunch of skiers just ahead of us who continued higher. We didn't see them ski down but there were probably some good turns in the semi-corn of the sunny slopes. Skiing back down to camp was fun since the wide open slopes allowed us to do long glides on the fast snow. We had dinner, on our "evening" snow bench, earlier than the previous night so that we didn't get shaded out while eating. Then we skied up to the edge of Back Bowl and did numerous glides back to camp on the rapidly refreezing, and very fast, snow. Mount Rainier was beautiful in the low-angled light.

Sunday started sunny, but there were high clouds to the southwest and a nice lenticular on Mount Rainier's summit. The sun was able to start softening the snow before the clouds came over, and after breakfast we did another tour down Mazama Ridge, exploring glades that I had never seen and checking out the east side of the ridge. This time we went farther down the ridge, stopping where the combination of denser trees and shallower snowpack made our style of skiing impractical. We packed up and left camp about 1:30, and Tahoma was able to stay on skis part way down the west side of Mazama Ridge, to where the gullies develop. She walked from there back down to the road. The skiing was challenging for me because the west slopes were really tracked up - ski, snowshoe, boot - and the tracks were firm.

All in all a great trip. Now I remember, though, why I like spring ski camping so much more than winter. Warmer and longer days, better snow for travelling. Given this year's snowpack, however, it didn't seem wise to wait until our usual April-May timing for our trip. Hopefully next year will be back to normal!