July 24, 2013, Hood, Palmer and Magic Mile

I had intended to start off in the dark, but the moon lit up everything.  Plus I was a little late after not getting much sleep two nights in a row.  So civil daylight had already started when I was about halfway up (just skinning up the public lane adjacent to the Palmer lift).  Here are some views from the top of the Palmer:










The first ski lap was still absurdly frozen, all the way down to ~100' vertical from the parking lot.

Since the lifts still hadn't opened, I again skinned up the Magic Mile "public park" (which really has plenty of open skiing terrain, and only a few "features" off on the side).  At the Palmer, now with courses going up and racers coming down, I experimented with a nice skintrack route along the far skinner's left of the lift on the periphery of an isolated race lane, which worked out perfectly on all counts.

The second ski lap started around 7:50 and the snow was getting very nice.  I skied back down to the Palmer base then took my third and final descent around 8:40 €“ perfection!  But I suspect than in just a couple more hours it would have been very gloppy.

The Magic Mile was still a little firm, since that low-angle gully is now shielded from the earliest morning sun (by the walls being much higher than the melting snowpack).  However, mine were still the first tracks of the morning, as lapping that with the lift really doesn€™t make any sense.  (Only ~100' vertical downhike to the parking lot, but lots of horizontal to the lift.) 

I would have loved to take a few more laps, but alas I had to catch a mid-day PDX flight, so thus concluded my 2012-13 ski season.