March 6, 2005, Camp Muir and Nisqually chutes

Sunday was definitely the better day of the week end for us (and not only because of the weather). We had started with the plan to climb Shuksan over 2 days to make it a comfortable week end. On Saturday afternoon as we are all packed up and ready to go at the Shuksan trailhead, Corinne asks "where are my ski boots?". After a little nervous laugh we had to come reality...the ski boots were sitting comfortably in our living room back in Kirkland! >:( We felt a little bad for our friends Elena and Pierre who made the trip up from San Francisco for the week end to go skiing. We still decided to go up to the camp for the afternoon to at least get the view on Baker from the ridge. It was a nice hike but we ended up carrying our skis around for most of the afternoon...not the best introduction to randonnee skiing for Elena...(it was possible to put skis on starting 3800 feet).

Anyways, long story short - we ended up at Paradise on Sunday and were quite happy about the end result for our week end. I was amazed to see how few people were up there on Sunday. We went up to Muir in some very hot temperatures (we litteraly saw a guy hiking up almost naked). The ski down on the upper part of the snowfield was what I call sub-optimal (hard crust alternating with some icy spots).
We then skied down the Nisqually chutes which were in great conditions. We were able to find some untracked slopes to the (skier's) right of the chute.
Here is a picture of Pierre skiing down the chute: