A new year of skiing

Andrea and I spent the New Year's holiday at Mt. Baker in northern Washington with Chester and his brother Will. We were blessed with three days of excellent conditions and great weather. Well, ok, two days of great conditions, one day of rainy-snow/ snowy-rain that quickly turned to rain. But not before we schralped the mash potatoes all morning - and we were getting tired anyway so no love lost on leaving Baker a little early on Monday afternoon.

































But Baker really has an inspired setup in terms of the side-country. Basically, if you have the beacon/shovel/probe trio (which we all carried), you could duck the ropes almost anywhere on the mountain and another world was waiting there. Even two DAYS after the last storm, there were still untracked lines aplenty for anyone willing to take on a 10-20 minute hike. Let's see Alyeska make THAT kind of statement.

Well, Chester went back to Alaska and the dumpage of the decade, Will back to LA to start his new practice, and we headed back to Seattle where Mother Nature was planning on owning us for a few more weeks. Since coming back, we have had non-stop storms. Not like Anchorage with snow upon snow upon snow; it's been more like snow upon rain upon snow upon avalanche. The avy conditions have been so sketchy we haven't really been doing that much skiing. Hopefully this weekend our luck will change.

Aaron in the Baker backcountry