January 1, 2006, Skyline Ridge

Skiied at Skyline Ridge today with Hayes and Ryan.  On our way to moonlight bowl, we were seduced by a steep shot through the trees just north of the summit.  We descended northwest from the ridge for about 200 feet of good, deep turns, then it got heavy with a few tree bombs.  We kept going a few hundred more feet before we turned around near a creek and skinned back up to moonlight bowl.  Breaking trail was hard work...for Ryan

We dug a pit about 20 feet below the ridge in moonlight bowl (about 5300 feet I think).  We found a foot thick heavy wind packed slab with a very poor bond to the underlying rain crust (slid with a gentle shovel lever).  A few ski cuts produced no results.  Winds had been blowing from the east all day, probably for a few days judging by the large drifts that had formed along the ridge.  We decided to stay in the more treed areas of the bowl and avoided convex slopes.  The snow was not wind affected at all from about 50 feet below the ridge.

The east facing slope of moonlight bowl was excellent, a little wind packed the top 50 feet, but then about 6 inches of lightish new snow over deep high density "powder".  It made for great turns if you have wide shovels on your ski tips!  Wishing we had time for a few laps, we decided instead to skin back up to the radio tower (for fear of the brush on the way to the RR grade) and head back to the car.  We took turns breaking a circuitous skin track up to the tower, eventually overshooting it and arriving at it from the east.  I guess we got a little disoriented because it started snowing pretty hard as we headed up.  Then the sun popped out as we crested the ridge and skiied back down to the car.  Great way to bring in the new year!