March 18, 2006, Mt Hood area

(Andy)

We were fortunate for yet another wonderful day in the sub-alpine of the Mt Hood area. The absurd deepness of last weekend is gone, but we still had great skiing. This area is between 4000-5800ft and has W and NW aspects. This is the same area we went to as last Saturday and Sunday, except for our first run we headed to the slopes closer to the parking lot. The snow here consisted of several inches of winterish fresh snow on-top a soft base.

Ann:


The upper slope showed no tracks, but the lower, narrower slash had tracks in it from the past few days and with our tracks plus parties behind us, it was getting pretty tracked. We skinned back to the top and traversed the ridge to get to the "bowl" we skied last Saturday and Sunday. A party of snowboarders were having their way with the slope, but there was still plenty of untouched. We had two excellent runs in this area. The slope here faces west and gets more sun and wind effect, so the snow was not as winterish as the first run but it was still good. (The first photo and the one below are from this area).

Andy:


We found low avy danger. Our shovel compression test was hard to get layers to move, and knocking-off a cornice on a small roll required a good amount of effort.