February 1, 2003, Paradise up to Pan Point
2/1/03
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
2633
3
Saturday, Gary, Ania and I headed out to paradise because of the lack of new snow at the passes. They opened up the gate at 10am for some odd reason. There was no snow in the parking lot. All the way from the flats to the top of pan point, excluding the upper wall and some ridge lines, there was 8" to 1' of new snow over a wet saturated snow base. I performed several snow tests and found the new snow well bonded to the wet stuff. We took a few runs down from pan point and had many good turns there. The usual white out provided another interesting day on the big R.
joshua
joshua
Joshua - Do you think there is any hope of soft snow in the area now? I'm thinking about going on Thursday, but I don't want boilerplate or nasty crust. Any guesses about how it might be on the Muir snowfield? Thanks.
Charles, don't have time to write up a report, but there's about 8 inches of powder reasonably well bonded to a strong crust on sun-sheltered slopes up here (i.e., Mt. Baker Highway). Should last until at least Thursday. Anything below about 4000 feet and anything which gets any sun at all has crust on it. Base at 4000 feet is about 6 feet, deepening with increased altitude.
Hope that helps. Enjoy.
Mark
Hope that helps. Enjoy.
Mark
Mark, thanks, that helps a lot. We will add that to the (limited) list of possible destinations.
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