December 19, 2001, Divide Lake, Snoqualmie Pass

The forecast and my ability to get away for some skiing coincided, so I headed up to Snoqualmie Pass. Blue sky appeared as I neared the pass, but east winds soon pushed fog into the area, which turned out to be a good thing because it kept the snow great all the way down to 3000', all day long. Skiing up the closed ski area through the beautiful snow, I quickly abandoned my original destination of Nordic Pass, and skied several runs around the Silver Fir lift. The snow was just about the most powdery I have ever experienced at Snoqualmie (I know - not saying much!), and in fact, it was too good in some ways. There was about 14" fluffy powder on top of the hefty rain crust from Sun-Mon, and the snow was so light that it was sometimes too easy to slice through it and feel the crust. Maybe the best were the lower groomed slopes with the last, most fluffy 6-8" on top - heavenly (yes, they had done some grooming even though the area was closed). In the afternoon I thought about skiing down through the forest to Lodge Lake on the area's backside, but it was apparent as I started down that in many places not enough snow had filtered down through the canopy to sufficiently cover the rain crust, so I just bashed around the woods by Divide Lake and got really tired breaking trail by myself. In the woods, there was not a very good bond of the new snow to the crust, and the crust was over more loose snow.

There are some photos from this trip here.

Charles