Washington begins

We are finally getting consistent snow in the Cascades and it feels great. Although stability in the backcountry has not been great, what with freeze/thaw cycles creating buried surface hoar, and high winds causing leeward slopes to slab up. So instead I have been sampling the finest Crystal and Alpy have to offer, heading to Crystal last Saturday and Monday and skiing Alpental on Christmas day. As evidenced below, the snow was deep and light all day.



Crystal's new Northway lift lays bare all the best kept secrets of Crystal's North Backcountry. This probably bums some people out. But since I was never as familiar as some with the best of these secrets I am happy about the new lift. Resort side-country was never quite as sacred to me as it seems to be to others so the fact that more of Crystal's terrain is open to the masses doesn't really hurt my feelings to much. It's easy to get your fill of "pure" backcountry on the other side of the road.

But let's talk about the snow: it's light, really light. And as long as you can stay out of the wind hammered stuff and ski runs like a lusciously untracked and deep Shot Six that we encountered at Alpental today, it is nothing but the good. A few inbound slides under Breakover today were a little disconcerting but they were mainly loose and did not seem to slow anyone down too much. (Although I have been more and more getting into the habit of skiing with a beacon even at the resort.)

I am heading up to Baker for NYE then to Alaska the next weekend. Hopefully the recent touchy snow will relax enough for us to get into the backcountry a little. And if not, I still have 6 days on my Summit pass until I am skiing for free! Happy Holidays all.