February 15, 2006, Twin Lakes-Silver Peak bowl

Don't know what happened to that 9" of new snow that supposedly fell Monday night. The snow in the forest was horrible, virtually no new snow over refrozen snow, and we didn't try to do any turns there. The snow in the open was fabulous, but was mostly a uniform 3 to 4 inches between 2500 feet to 5200 feet. Turns on steeper slopes weren't good because they scraped through to the frozen layer. Turns on lower angle slopes were great cruisers. The underlying refrozen snow didn't hold a boot, but we never broke through while skiing. The new snow fell as good snow and has only gotten better since. Fairly large surface hoar everywhere, overlying a very dry mix of snow crystals and grauple. Sparkly, silky, cohesionless, and fast.

We parked at Hyak, fishscaled up the Cold Creek road, then skied through forest to Twin Lakes. Abandoned idea of turns in forest to the SW and skinned up through sunny forest to the Windy Pass area. We stayed close to the end of the NE arm of Silver Peak and climbed up into Silver Peak bowl on its east side and then to the 5200 foot knob near the top of the bowl. We started back down the way we had come up, but the difficult visibility in the shade of the cliffs and scraping though on the steeper slopes made us reevaluate. Changed plans to skiing down just inside the NW arm, not as steep and better lighting. Very enjoyable cruising turns on the moderate slopes. Turned E a ways down and skied the top edge of the big clearcut - more silky cruising to Windy Pass. Up to Nordic Pass, then traversed under Radio Ridge (turns would have been bad) to get to Rockdale viewpoint and XC trail. The north facing slope from the viewpoint looked so nice that we had to try it - just as great as everything else (rare)! Skied up to Grand Junction and then along XC trail to Hyak, and took a "blue" run down to the bottom - excellent.

If you're into this kind of trip and can get out in the next couple of days, with the cold weather I would guess the snow will stay good, or get better, for most non-south facing aspects. Just don't plan on making any enjoyable turns in the forest.