April 16, 2006, Mission Ridge (pics added)
4/16/06
WA Cascades East Slopes Central
2823
1
Hiked Mission Ridge this morning. Beautiful weather with mostly sunny skies and an occaisional puffy cloud floating up over the ridge. Pretty chilly with moderate winds at the summit. The new snow/graupel was drifted up to 5 inches in places, dry, and very carvable. Only one inch over bulletproof down low, so finding the right areas was critical. I love Mission Ridge when it is closed. 2 hours house to house for 2200 vert.
I was also thinking about posting a TR and was stoked when I came across this thread. As some people down the valley were searching for Easter eggs I was out searching for late season pow. I'd been watching storms come through Mission Ridge all week and knew I had to get up for some turns.
Thinking I was ahead of the pack, I rolled into the parking lot at 8 and found 4 other cars. It only took a minute to throw the pack together and crank up the mp3 player and I was off. Starting up Mimi from the base I saw 3 sets of skin tracks; 2 quickly cut off toward chair 3 while I paralled the other set up to midway. Up to this point I was a little worried about the lack of new snow; about an inch on a frozen cat track. Just then I was met by a skier on decent who told me the upper mountain was in good shape, so I continued on.
The sun was feeling mighty nice, and I spent a few minutes at the top just enjoying the silence. Dropping in to Sunspot, I was greated with 4-6 inches of dry (if not slightly wind packed) fluff. Those first several turns felt so nice that I knew I would have to push back any other plans for the morning to continue playing on the upper mountain. I changed out gear (yeah, I need a splitboard) and headed back up, this time opting to give Hourglass a try. The chute was sweet, and this is one of my favorite lines (and everyone else's) on a powder day when the lifts are running. The run out was a bit littered with a debris mine field that had frozen and then was covered by the new snow. Again, I just couldn't quite accept the fact that I needed to head down, so yet another gear change. My path lead out to the end of Bomber Chutes for this final ride down. It was starting to snow by this point, but as I looked across the ski area I could make out several other people touring. Once again the upper section was pure heaven and the lower section that had been sucking up the morning sun was soft and a bit grabby but virgin tracks none the less.
As mentioned in the above report, the bottem of the hill was dust on crust, making me aware that catching an edge would be instant pain. Still snowing fat flakes all the way to the base area. Walking back to the car I passed 3 more people heading up and told them the good news just as if I was spreading the gospel. 10 cars in the lot as I packed up and headed down. If there are any TAY'ers here in the valley looking for someone to tour with (pref. snowshoeing/snowboarding) please drop me a PM or email.
Here is a pic of upper Sunspot on 4/16/2006 and one from last year, 4/4/2005, in nearly the same location and with the same conditions:
Thinking I was ahead of the pack, I rolled into the parking lot at 8 and found 4 other cars. It only took a minute to throw the pack together and crank up the mp3 player and I was off. Starting up Mimi from the base I saw 3 sets of skin tracks; 2 quickly cut off toward chair 3 while I paralled the other set up to midway. Up to this point I was a little worried about the lack of new snow; about an inch on a frozen cat track. Just then I was met by a skier on decent who told me the upper mountain was in good shape, so I continued on.
The sun was feeling mighty nice, and I spent a few minutes at the top just enjoying the silence. Dropping in to Sunspot, I was greated with 4-6 inches of dry (if not slightly wind packed) fluff. Those first several turns felt so nice that I knew I would have to push back any other plans for the morning to continue playing on the upper mountain. I changed out gear (yeah, I need a splitboard) and headed back up, this time opting to give Hourglass a try. The chute was sweet, and this is one of my favorite lines (and everyone else's) on a powder day when the lifts are running. The run out was a bit littered with a debris mine field that had frozen and then was covered by the new snow. Again, I just couldn't quite accept the fact that I needed to head down, so yet another gear change. My path lead out to the end of Bomber Chutes for this final ride down. It was starting to snow by this point, but as I looked across the ski area I could make out several other people touring. Once again the upper section was pure heaven and the lower section that had been sucking up the morning sun was soft and a bit grabby but virgin tracks none the less.
As mentioned in the above report, the bottem of the hill was dust on crust, making me aware that catching an edge would be instant pain. Still snowing fat flakes all the way to the base area. Walking back to the car I passed 3 more people heading up and told them the good news just as if I was spreading the gospel. 10 cars in the lot as I packed up and headed down. If there are any TAY'ers here in the valley looking for someone to tour with (pref. snowshoeing/snowboarding) please drop me a PM or email.
Here is a pic of upper Sunspot on 4/16/2006 and one from last year, 4/4/2005, in nearly the same location and with the same conditions:
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