January 13, Snoqualmie Surprise

If you measure snow quality by the size of the smiles at the bottom of the run, then yesterday was top shelf.

We went with low expectations, given reports of a small amount of light powder on a hard crust, including one phoned-in report from Friday warning others to "stay away" after one party tried some trees in Commonwealth Basin. We pondered going north since Stevens won the snow lottery, but for various reasons our party members didn't want to do that particular drive. We chose a route where we knew we could ski relatively low angle slopes which seem to be the most fun to be had in these conditions.

The skin up was tricky at points due to the hard slippery surface beneath the new snow (requiring booting for one non-optional steep bit at about 3500 where steps were quite easy to kick into the hard crust), but as elevation increased, it got better. Above around 4500, we had zero climbing issues. The snow above the crust(s) was unconsolidated, so we had no concerns about slabs going. We were happily suprised by the quality of the turns on the descent, and lapped a bit above 4500, moving to slightly steeper slopes as we continued, finding that even 25-30 degree slopes skied well. Though we could feel the crust at the bottom of turns, it was quite carvable and not so hard as to create that "bottoming out" feeling. Below 4500, the crust made itself more apparent, so we returned to the lower angle strategy, sticking more to 20-ish degree slops give or take. On the climb up, we'd expected much of this portion to be "good practice" but were happy to find that it was actually quite fun. Up high, both woods and open were nice, as long as we stayed off heavily sun affected aspects (we were doing primarily SW-ish aspects), whereas down lower, the open areas were significantly more fun than the woods which were dust-on-crust in the truest sense of the phrase, though still quite turnable snow, at least for us east-coast-trained folks who see ice that you can get an edge into as being quite distinct from "boilerplate."

While there were no face shots, the day cranked the fun meter suprisingly high, and there were several comments about "ego snow" and as implied above, many wide smiles throughout the descents.

Sorry, meant to post this last night to provide some useful info for today's skiers, but I pretty much passed out after cooking/eating dinner. Time for me to get to some of those chores that have been sitting through all this great skiing we've had lately...