June 21, 2012, Paradise glacier

Went up to Muir and skied down the Paradise and out through Golden Gate yesterday evening.  Wonderful day.  Snow was great, if a little heavy on the middle section of the glacier.  Crevasse wise the schrund is opening and so are the cracks skiers left of the rock outcrop near the top of the glacier.  We saw this from up by Anvil so went skiers right as there were only two of us and weren't up for heroics.  Found a couple smaller cracks beginning to open up on that side but they were easy to see from above.  Didn't see any recent tracks out there.  Snow was continuous and good all the way to the parking lot.  Got back to the car around 8pm after a relaxed noon start and climb.  Pretty empty snowfield and Camp Muir was about deserted.

Saw the chinooks flying all day and had hoped they were on a training mission.  But with their repeated visits and the small plane circling the Nisqually we decided something was up.  Saw in the paper this morning about the accident over on the Emmons.  Really sad.

My day yesterday started out really bad but clearly it could have been worse.  My partner may post some pics as he had a camera, I didn't.