April 22, 2008, After-School Patrol at Snoqualmie

Tom inspects a huge jump under construction at Summit Central. The gap between takeoff and landing is nearly twenty feet deep.

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During the winter, my son Tom and I occasionally sneak away after school to go night skiing at Snoqualmie Pass. On a school night, it feels like playing hooky. This spring a number of auspicious events have converged:

[li]Daylight Savings Time is here[/li]
[li]Most of the ski areas are closed[/li]
[li]Snoqualmie Pass snowpack is 170% of normal[/li]
[li]Tom is in his last year of elementary school[/li]

With so much snow in the mountains, it seems a shame to waste it. Why should our hooky sessions end when the ski areas close?

Last weekend I removed the alpine bindings from Tom's skis and mounted my wife's old Silvretta 404s on them. I took an old pair of shaped skins and removed the tip and tail hardware so I can center the skins on his skis and fold the excess skin over tip and tail. Tom's alpine boots are heavy but serviceable for short tours. I figured he's good to go.

We headed up to Summit Central this afternoon to try it out.

I picked up Tom after school around 3:15 p.m. We drove to the ski patrol parking lot and started skinning up from there. The area was generally quiet, but the terrain park crew was working on some huge features for next weekend. (The Summit has decided to operate Central on April 26-27.) After a gradual climb--getting used to the gear--we reached the top of Central Express and de-skinned. We had a great ski back down on corn snow. Tom thought it was one of his best runs ever. He said, "We should do this again!" It was still light when we got back to Seattle.

Mission accomplished. We're definitely going to try this again while the snow lasts. If any other parents with backcountry newbies in the family want to join us, let me know. It looks like Tuesdays will be most favorable for our schedule. We'll see how it goes...



After-school patrol at Summit Central.

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