Dec29, 2008, Snoqualmie area tour

After a week off work with no regular partners to go out touring with (though I did get in nice lift skiing, hikes with the dog, and a great 4 hour XC ski yesterday at Gold Creek including some hellacious trailbreaking), Russ gently dragged me out of my evening lethargy last night and lured me out for a tour today. We had a wonderful gap in the weather, with high clouds  and some low clouds and pretty silvery light.

Someone had gone partway up our intended route earlier in the AM, so we got a nice assist on the trailbreaking. Once we hit their turnaound, our pace slowed a good deal, as the breaking was pretty hard work. At our high point (somewhere above 5K), we decided to check out some 30+ degree west-ish mostly treed slopes. Good choice. Up high it was a tad wind scoured so we were hitting a little crust beneath a little under a foot of lightly wind compacted powder, then we settled into nice bouncy bottomless turns for quite a ways. We took turns test cutting little stretches  and stopping in islands of safety for a while as we gained confidence that we had stable conditions. We did not dig a pit today - between skiing what were clearly windward slopes and the ski cuts and the incrementally committing nature of the terrain (not one huge continuous slope that might break free all at once), we felt confident enough not to.

It was the sort of day where hitting a flat on the way down w/o any tracks ahead of you would bog you down, but we could at least get some sort of turns going on all but the lowest angle of open slopes (as usual, open areas were deeper and more wallowy). That said, it was certainly not "fast snow" either. Some massive tree bombs down, but generally the skiing in the trees was righteous as long as you minded the craters.

Thanks for the inspiration to get out, Russ - definitely worth it!! The  break in the weather was a nice surprise, too.