May 3-4, 2003, Pair of Dice
5/3/03
2028
1
Saturday: bulletproof frozen sun/rain crust; sucked.
Sunday: 4 inches of new & it snowed all day! We brought our XC cuz we thought it would be new over ice but it was new over slurpy--just firm enought that it was oh-so-easy to ski with skinny ski, either telemark or parallel. Skied up Mazama, down the back bowl (even on the gentlest slopes the slurpy wanted to sluff) then down to Eunice Lake by the summer route (crossing the big gulley was a bit tenuous with steep slurpy walls) then to Reflection Lake and up the Devi's Dip trail to Paradise. Absolutely great day on great snow with XC gear. abc
Sunday: 4 inches of new & it snowed all day! We brought our XC cuz we thought it would be new over ice but it was new over slurpy--just firm enought that it was oh-so-easy to ski with skinny ski, either telemark or parallel. Skied up Mazama, down the back bowl (even on the gentlest slopes the slurpy wanted to sluff) then down to Eunice Lake by the summer route (crossing the big gulley was a bit tenuous with steep slurpy walls) then to Reflection Lake and up the Devi's Dip trail to Paradise. Absolutely great day on great snow with XC gear. abc
I was up there Saturday with intent of snowboarding down Muir, but the aforementioned grim crust, less than encouraging reports from descending skiers, and cloud ceiling at about Alta Vista level led me to choose Plan B: Castle/Tatoosh. Which was not great, but at least had softened a little by 1PM. Someone else's report from Chinook that snow needed consolidation also holds for the Tatoosh; at one point I fell in some kind of hole where about 3 feet of snow basically dropped out from under me as I made a hard turn. The new snow had just started as I descended; guess I should have switched days and been up there Sunday ...
Reply to this TR
Please login first: