April 13, Muir snowfield

It was 12 years since I took the ski bus to Mt. Hood Meadows in high school. I have been mountaineering, rock climbing and ice climbing for the last 3 years and finally gave into the preasure to get a backcountry set up. I spent three days at Snoqualmie in bounds to get reaquaint myself. It wasn€™t long before I was comfortably going down black diamonds and charging down the blue runs.

April 12th was a warm day and avy danger was high so I postponed my Muir snowfield trip to the 13th. All the melted snow had refroze and was wind blasted. My buddy packed his snowshoes (unnecessary) and his downhill set up, while hiking in his Trango boots. I hadn€™t thermo molded my liners on my Scarpa Spirit 4€™s and got blisters on my arches. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to remedy this problem? Do you guys use super feet and then thermo mold or just thermo mold?

The snow was packed well to Muir and the sun was out despite the 30% chance of rain/snow. At any rate, we made it to Camp Muir after 5 ½ hours. A lame time by my standards and by that time, the weather was moving in.

We avoided the wind in the hut and prepared for our decent. I am used to climbing ice with tools, not headed down on skis. Still have a lot to learn and only took one good spill.


I continued to ski gingerly down the ice John opted to walk down the iced part until we reached a lower elevation and softer snow.  The whiteout started as we were 15 minutes away from Paradise. Still having my bearings and a good sense of direction, we went back to the parking lot without using the map & compass. In retrospect, we would have had a more enjoyable time skiing from Panorama Point.