Feb 17, 2008... Mazama Bowl ... Paradise

Jen and I led our second Mountaineer's trip on Sunday and I think everyone  had a great time. Originally the plan was to do the Tatoosh but after seeing some of the crowns around on the steeper pitches we opted to tour out of Paradise instead. As you can see in the photos below the day was stellar! Blue skies and zero wind...it did get fairly warm in the afternoon but the snow held up surprisingly well. After skinning  just a few hundred yards, it was apparent that the sunnier aspects were going to suffer some serious thermal degradation as the day progressed. With that in mind we dropped down behind the Paradise Inn to the road and headed up to Mazama Bowl. We dug a pit on a SE aspect just over the ridge  and found  things pretty well consolidated ,but a fairly substantial layer about 12" down provided a very clean shear on shovel shear test,  it took about 9 whacks from the elbow on the compression test, but didn't break cleanly. Our block sheared all the way across but took about three full hops to do it. Our conclusion was  to ski the mellow slopes and test again on the north facing slope we truly desired. The bond seemed much better on the second pit and the snow was really nice ... about 4" skier penetration and smooth as silk...we all made a bunch of laps and  even the west facing heading back out skied really well. Thanks to a great group....let's do it again sometime.....Jerry