12/05/2013, Paradise, Mt. Rainier, Washington

Hey guys, nothing spectacular here; just a fun day getting some warm up runs in and wanted to give you a conditions report. There is about 38 inches of very consolidated snowpack making for the start of a very good base with about 9 inches of very light, dry powder on top. The new snow has bonded very well to the old layer thanks to the rain and gradual cool down. We saw no evidence of slide activity and all stability tests indicated green.

In general, it was an awesome day of splitboarding on Mt. Rainier! We arrived at the Paradise lot around 10:30 AM and headed up to Glacier Vista via the main summer trial to skinner`s left of Alta Vista. The snow was the softest, lightest, driest powder we get in the Pacific Northwest and the temperature stayed cold with a high of around 18. We had calm winds and a broken ceiling with a few sun breaks and intermittent flurries.

We did 2 roughly 4 mile laps skinning up the ridge line between the Nisqually and Paradise Glaciers and dropped the steeper canyon on the Paradise side. This line offered it all; huge open bows, fun but short steeps, some flats to cross and finally a super fun steep tree run back to the road where we skinned back up to the parking lot for a beer.

Met a wonderful Australian family on holidays and chatted with them for a bit before making our second lap up. It was a great day and the snow really couldn't have been much better. This arctic cold is really keeping the snow soft and fun.

Great time and looking at hitting it again this week. Rumor has it there may be some fresh snow by Thursday!