January 27, 2006, Nordic Pass, Silver Peak bowl

Here's a conditions report in case it could be useful for tomorrow. Joe and I started skinning up the nicely groomed runs by the Silver Fir lift at about 7:45 and took the Rockdale loop trail (not yet groomed) from Grand Junction over to the edge of the old-growth forest. In the open there were 12-16 inches of fairly nice (cohesionless, not too moist) new snow overlying the crust from earlier in the week. In the big trees, unfortunately, most of the new snow had gotten hung up high, and there were only about 4-5 inches of new snow in the most tree protected areas. This might have been ok if the underlying crusty snow had been smooth, but it was lumpy, cratered, and hard. Overall good coverage, though our route avoided the potential creek problems lower down in the forest. Made for pretty easy trailbreaking though when we stayed in the densest trees, and pretty soon we were at Nordic Pass.

We dropped down to Windy Pass and then skinned up through the strip of trees between the huge clearcut and the bottom of Silver Peak bowl. The underlying refreezing snow here was much smoother and not as hard, and there was a little more new snow under the trees. We got over to the glades of the NW arm of Silver and skinned up through the trees, stopping where we were going to have to head out into the glades and their deeper snow (probably around 4800 feet). It was snowing and blowing pretty well there and there were some definite signs of the top few inches of snow becoming cohesive.

Coming back to Windy Pass was mostly gliding with a few turns here and there. We had to re-skin to climb back to Nordic Pass, then it was mostly gliding in our track back to the XC trails, now groomed. The Silver Fir runs had been pretty well skied but it looked like everyone had already left, and the snow on the lower part was a typical Snoqualmie skier-packed moist and firm surface.

With the amount of new snow, steeper non-forested terrain would probably have provided some good turns, but it sure was nice to be back skiing though the beautiful old-growth forest after (for me) a two year absence.