April 10, 2003, Mazama Ridge

The forecast for MT Rainier was for a snow level of 5,000 ft so Charles, my old ski buddy who had moved to Oregon, Kathy and I drove up to Paradise. It was raining but that didnt stop us. Skinned up Mazama Ridge in heavy snow, with rain and drizzle alternating. We could see evidence of recent avalanches on the steeper, south facing slopes. Checked out the backbowl. Charles had new, fat skis and plastic boots that had never been in the backcountry and he wanted to see what they could do in bad snow, and wanted to revisit all the old places we had skied so many times. Skied down the backbowl on soft rain runnels, skiing was better than we had expected. The steep south-facing slope of the bowl, aka "911" had avy debris, so we left it alone.
The run down the "tourist route" of Mazama back to the road wasn't too bad either. Charles was highly pleased with the performance of his new skis. :) Couldn't stay very long as he had to drive all the way back to Coosbay.  We left the parking lot in driving rain. All in all, a short but good trip.