Home > Trip Reports > January 2, 2006, Paradise

January 2, 2006, Paradise

1/2/06
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
4043
10
Posted by Scotsman on 1/2/06 8:34am
JibberD, myself and Macnight Johnson arrived at Paradise about 10 ish. Lots of new snow and not many cars. Most people seemed to be snow-shoers or XC skiers.

Headed up to Alta Vista for first run. Dug a pit,  East facing slope, 6000 ft, about 33 degrees,6 inches of fresh on crust, solid below but got wetter nearer ground. Did not move after 30 blows but sheared easily on shovel shear test at about 12 inches which confused us a bit. Did another quick shovel shear test and this one was OK.
Group decision was that it was OK so we dropped in to heavy cascade glop. It was so heavy Doug could hardly get his skies to run downhill.
With heavy hearts we skinned over to Bundy's hoping for better. Un-Bundy ( which is what we call the slope , skier's right of normal Bundy)skied great. No face shots but we did get groin shots. It was so good we lapped it twice and then hit normal Bundy's which was good also.

We had all wanted to ski what RonJ and gang had told us was Mazama Face and Refrigerator, clear ,west facing slopes you can see from Bundy's. We skinned up the normal route to the top of Mazama and then headed along the ridge looking for a drop-in to the faces. Eventually we found some tracks through steep trees that led to the face. The face was brilliant, deep , fairly light cascade powder. So good we lapped it three times with three telemark skiers who had also found the stash and put in a skin track from the road up to the trees at top
Really good, groin shots, freshies on every run and it was snowing heavily.
At 4.15 we called it a day and headed back to the car.
Best day skiing I have had at Paradise. The Alta Vista run made us think it was going to be a bad day ,so it just shows you.

Thanks to Jibber D and Telemac for a great day.
Where were the rest of you?
Chris
Workin >:( Skied friday though, glad you found the goods!

Good report Did you get a early gate opening ?,sounds like you followed our lines from the 1st cept we skipped bundy's thinking it was wind scoured.
Un bundys would be less so.
The refridgerator lies east beyond MAzama face almost at the end of Mazama ridge where its aspect turns Nwesterly .
anyway glad you got the goods.
Alpental and the S pass sucked on monday.

Thanks for the report Chris.  It was a great day out there with you and Mack.  Fresh powder tracks all day long ;D :D 8)

To clarify for the readers, I was having problems on Alta Vista no so much due to the snow, but the fact that ice had formed on my ski bases in places and the snow was, in turn, sticking to that ???.  It was a lot like the skin glopping phenomenon.  Fortunately the bases cleared for the rest of the day.  So, yeah, the snow was very, very nice.  My low snow year gouged and gashed bases were not so nice early on.  Lesson: don't be a dirtbag budget boy and get those skis tuned and waxed from time to time.

Does anyone swear by a good wax to bring with on tours?

Thanks go out to our group of tele folks who shared Mazama face with us.  It was our pleasure to reciprocate and break a skin track over to the next bowl.  Happy skiing to you!

Does anyone swear by a good wax to bring with on tours?

I have a chunk of SWIX (yellow) wax (all condition) with me and a wine cork.  Rub the wax on and use the cork to smooth it out.  This has worked well for me in those "sticky" situations  :D.  

Good report Chris.  As a wannabee Scot to the real item, I gotta tell my first name is "Mack" as in Truck, or "MacKnight". ;)  
Also, I was freeheelin' with scotsman and jibberd while they AT'ed.  
It's a lot easier to find Mazama Face from the Paradise Valley road, but it was pretty cool to get at it from the top by playing Blind Man's Fluff.
I got some wierd grunge on my skins after that day, maybe from the back of the truck. >:(  Any tips for cleaning them without removing all of the glue?

I got some wierd grunge on my skins after that day, maybe from the back of the truck. >:(  Any tips for cleaning them without removing all of the glue?

Windex and paper towels will work on some of that "wierd stuff", but for the really wierd, besides a base cleaner which will take off the glue, I dunno.

I have had success in removing dirt from skin glue by scraping with a metal wax scraper- vigorously. It left a nice workable glue surface.

Mad_Dog is the one for skin advice, but if I remember correctly, Kam likes a nice hard cheese for B/C wax.

Kam likes a nice hard cheese for B/C wax.


Cheese?  Say like a festering hunk of parmesan?  What about bacon flavored cheese whiz in the gas powered can?  Too soft probably.  Plus I wouldn't want to lead the Paradise fox on a wild cheese chase all over the mountain.  That'd be cruel.

But seriously, hmmm, you think cheese is the way to go?

I was not there myself but, I did see pics of him waxing his skis with fancy cheese(mmmm fancy cheese). When I asked him about it he claimed it worked great.

ok here is the link to the whole story.

http://www.leang.com/kam/mountains/tr/goat_mnt/

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january-2-2006-paradise
Scotsman
2006-01-02 16:34:29