February 17, 2006, Chair Peak Basin

Headed up to Chair Peak today hoping to ski the north slope descent.  It looked pretty good from the notch on Chair's east shoulder...



We found about 6 inches of very light non-cohesive snow with a poor bond to a hard crust.  After traversing about 100 feet towards the west side of the slope, we decided to turn around.  The frigid temps, difficulty traversing the dust-on-crust, later-than-we-liked time, unfamiliarity with the descent route to Snow Lake, and reasonably good ski conditions we observed on our ascent were all factors in our decision.

We encountered a wide variety of snow conditions on the descent down to Source Lake: excellent boot deep powder, reasonably fun wind packed snow, rock solid sun/wind crust,  avy debris, and of course the free-heeled skiers delight: breakable crust.  Sometimes we encountered all of these snow characteristics within one 100 vertical foot stretch of skiing :)  There were a couple sections of 500 vertical feet or so that were pretty fun skiing, best on east to northeast aspects that were shaded by cliffs and sheltered from the wind.  It definitely seems like the high winds and sun over the past couple days have worked their magic on the snow.  

North and west aspects should be decent tomorrow.  Anything that has seen the wind/sun combo is going to be challenging.  

It was very cold today, but the bright sunshine and calmer winds than we expected made it bearable.

Here are some more pics...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/84348123@N00/sets/72057594066304169/show/