January 26, Muir Snowfield lemonade

I see that Amar is busily crafting an epic for the same day and a more exciting descent route, so I'll try to focus on some of the peripheral aspects of this trip.

First off, I'll repeat what everyone is or is about to say: it's like summer out there.  I've been to Muir (too) many times, and this was one of the warmer and more pleasant occasions: @14:00, warm and no breeze.  A lawn chair and a tiny umbrella drink were all that were missing.

As for the trek up, the lower section from Paradise is a herd-hardened posthole ice minefield in the morning.  We were a party of three on splitboards, and made no attempt to skin up Pan Face.  Only a few hardy souls did, and I'm not sure how many actually made it to the top on skis versus making a terrifying transition to boots 1/2 way up the face.  My ice axe came in handy for cutting/enlarging a few steps here and there on the way up.

Views were great, of course.  Actually better than most times I've been to camp.  Hood was a stone's throw away, and even Jefferson made a rare cameo.  The rugged features of Adams and Helens were discernible.

Surprisingly not too crowded - relatively, for Muir - on a beautiful Sunday.

I badly wanted to hit the Nisqually chutes, which looked good, or even ride to the bridge, but we had a 15:00 cut off for a member of our group so we just made the quick trip back down.  I'd love to say the corn was epic, but it wasn't.  There were a few great spots on the SW aspects at ~14:45, but there was also a lot of heavily sun+melt/freeze-textured areas, and even some fairly icy areas still here and there.

All in all, a beautiful day to be in the mountains, with good company and breathtaking scenery.  And decent sliding conditions.