February 15-17, 2003, Silver Star

Started Feb. 15th. Parked at the road closure at Silver Star Creek (3400 ft) and skinned up to the flat area near 5100 ft to set up camp. From 3400 to 5100 ft, in somewhat dense forest, then up the creek the snow was old and hard. Near 5000 ft where the trees thinned the old snow was softer and there was about 3-4 inches of fresh powder. About 2 or 3 more inches fell overnight. We traversed around the upper west slopes of the basin towards the Silver Star saddle summit. The weather was changing about every hour with snow, wind, calm, sun. We skinned through awesome fresh powder terrain towards Silver Star to find the regions above the treeline near the granite ribs leading up to the Silver Star summit saddle in relatively bad condition (crust, wind slab, drifts). We skied down in the easterly area's, which were still wind affected. So of course we headed to where the conditions were superb and skiied the 1200' runs below Vasliki the next two days. Another 3 inches of fresh dry powder fell that night for our second day of powder skiing below Vasliki. These slopes were neither sun nor wind affected and had old and fresh dry powder. On Monday we saw several avalanches pouring off the steep granite rock of Vasliki, one was very large (sending powder high into the air). Others were smaller and seemingly a steady waterfall of snow, I couldn't figure out where the supply of snow was coming from to feed the stream of pouring snow down the granite but it lasted for minutes off and on.  The skiing between 6400' and 5200' was as good as it gets, untouched fresh dry powder. On top of all that we didn't see one other person all three days.