Feb. 7, Sunny Day Snoqualmie Pass

With the near backcountry starting to look all tracked out, decided to do an easy lift assist tour.  Beautiful day out in the mountains.

Greg and Crispin get ready to skin up, after skiing out
from the ski area

Unfortunately, one other party beat us out this morning. 

Greg searches for the smooth snow

Greg

Crispin

Good view of Rainier in the distance

Warm and Sunny

Crispin with his skins at the pass

Greg boots the final section

Finished up on No Fog.  Notice
Greg in background on one ski

Crispin retrieves Greg's ski after it speared into the big
tree stump

Back on two skis

Jan 18, Silver Peak Basin

First day on new skis.  Salomon S-Lab ultalight mountaineering ski

It's been a minimal year for snow.   The ground is covered, but we haven't been receiving many large dumps of snow.  With poor snow quality decided to do the long slog out to Silver Peak Basin.  Usually up high with the constant wind action, one can find smooth snow.   Also, nice to find some solitude.   No huge crowds, like the Alpental backcountry.    It does require that extra push out, and when finished playing on the slopes of Silver,  you still need to make it home.    This was my first day on my new lightweight, go far ski setup.  Short 165cm skis with an 80mm waist and the new matching Salomon binders.  Super happy with the setup.  Not a deep snow ski, but perfect for those firm days, or just a couple inches of soft.   Found they really liked the steep slopes rolling off the East side of Silver Peak basin.  Softer flex yielded great jump turns as the skis were unloaded.   Great day out in the woods.

perfect corduroy to start the journey

View across the way of Denny Mt.

Did a little recon of some North facing trees.  Just add powder.

Typical weather at the highpoint in Silver Peak Basin

Nordic Pass weather site

Followed the blue diamonds on the Nordic Pass route to get home.
Still looking for quickest way home, although it's probably just the groomed cross country trails.  

Dec. 27, Alpental Valley

Seth kick turns his way up to the NE ridge of Chair Peak

Headed up towards Chair Peak, thinking we would drop off the backside to Snow Lake.   Unfortunately after struggling/booting up to the ridgeline in steep deep snow we found that wind had affected the snow quality on the backside, not to mention visibility was poor.   The terrain over the NE shoulder has some pretty good slide paths and with lots of fresh snow and the bad visibility we decided to drop the front side.  Took a nice direct line back down to Source Lake, then did a lap off Pineapple Pass and then finished by climbing over to Draft Dodger inside the ski area's permit area.  Unfortunately the ski patrol had opened up the area that afternoon and we had a bit of tracked up skiing on our final descent.  Good day.  My legs were pretty fried by the finish.

Seth fixes his skins as we crest into Chair Peak basin

Initially attempted to boot up the far notch,
due to easy skin track leading into,  but ended up getting turned
 around by deep and steep snow.  Skied back down to lower notch

Kevin lays a skin track up to the ridge

Able to skin all the way to ridgeline on the lower notch

Seth

After aborting backside, found some good turns on the front.

Seth hydrates before we finish our climb to Pineapple Pass

Dec. 21, Silver Fir Opening and Pineapple Basin

Crispin and Geeb lay tracks into Pineapple Basin

Once again, good to see the usual cast of characters for the opening day of Silver Fir chairlift at Summit Central.  Ran into Chris, Quincy, Matt, Heidi,  John, Adam C., Crispin and Sean Courage.   With no new snow the hill looked pretty sketchy, but thankfully the surface crust wasn't too thick and skiing actually turned out to be pretty good.   For the second half of the day toured up the Alpental Valley with Crispin.   We reached source lake and decided to put a skin track going up No Fog.  Crust over in the Alpental Valley was a little thicker and just a trace of fluff on top of the crust.  The uphill journey was fun and it's always nice to be the first group laying tracks into an area.  We skipped Pineapple proper due to obvous wind scouring and our high point was above Draft Dodger Ridge.  Unfortunately skiing was really poor.  Looking forward to more snow! Elevation gain: 1,976 feet Distance; 4.5mi. Time 2:45

Almost looks good!

Notice the lack of ski penetration

No Fog down to Source Lake

Dec 14, Summit West opens and Alpy lap

According to media reports, due to global warming, the ski areas are suffering.  Also, according to media, avalanche danger is extreme and we should probably not even go skiing.  Truth be told feels like a pretty normal year.  All the ski areas in the northwest have started operations.  That being said, we do not have much of a snowpack yet.  Summit West started operations today and it was great to see all the regular skiers.  It's always fun to see the stoke of the first day of the season and see friends you haven't seen since last season.   Conditions were pretty firm today, and no one that I ski with wants to ski Summit West for long, but everyone was happy to be sliding down the hill at Snoqualmie Pass.   I stuck around for a couple hours then drove over to Alpental to see if I could skin high enough to find snow that hadn't been affected by recent rains.  Unfortunately any new snow was covered by a fairly solid rain crust.  Enjoyed the workout and challenge of skinning to the top, but the skiing was pretty awful.  Nice to be the only one that skied off the top today though.

Top Lift Shack looking ready for operations

Today Day 7 on snow,  Frozen top layer.  Hoar frost layer appears to be gone.

Day 6,   West lap, sticky mush,  then Chair 1 Alpy, decent top half Debbie's Gold        

Day 5 Skied Crystal w/ Greg and Francine,  6 inches fresh in Green Valley
Day 4, West laps with Francine, saw Seth And Ireton

Dec 6, Summit West - day 3 of season

Different day, same characters.   Everyone is motivated to ski.  Top 2/3 of West skied quite nicely.  Perhaps a little lumpy, but nice cold corduroy and some fluff on the sides.

Dec. 5, Paradise

Crispin and Greg making the climb to Camp Muir

Just another day in Paradise.  Hooked up with Greg Louie and Crispin Prahl to skin from Paradise (5,400) to Camp Muir (10,188) on Mt. Rainier.   Total elevation gain 4,788.   A little breezy as we crested Pan Pt. but once on the Muir snowfield enjoyed little wind and pleasant temperatures.  Near 9,000 feet we were passed by Amar Andaker.   He said today would be his 350th visit to Camp Muir.  We caught up with Amar at Muir and he offered to show us a better route down that avoided the Pan Pt. descent.  Despite an amazing amount of tracked snow (busy weekend at Rainier), we were able to find some clean routes for most of our descent.  Overall an excellent day with good friends and hope for an excellent ski season.

Mt. Adams in the distance.

Greg, Amar, and Crispin at Camp Muir

Crispin and Greg ready to go downhill!

Crispin

Greg

Amar Andaker finding us the best snow

Dec4, First day on Skis - Summit West, Snoqualmie Pass

I missed the first snows of the season, so was a little late getting on the skis.   However, noticed Snoqualmie Summit actually tried to groom out Summit West.   That got me excited to grab skis and make a couple of laps.  Sure nice to be on snow!

November 4, Xanadu versus Rosy Boa

Kevin on Xanadu  (going wrong way on trail)

Rain, rain, rain.  It's been a little wet at Snoqualmie Pass.   In typical fashion we started looking east for a dry spot to ride.  Cle Elum, wet, Yakima, getting wet, Leavenworth, not wet since 6 am!   Leavenworth the mecca of mountain biking.   Unfortunately not!   It should be a better place to ride, but trail development seems to be way too complicated when dealing with the federal government that controls most of the hills above town.  Leavenworth originally had Freund Canyon, an old road turned to trail.  They have slowly been getting approval to expand that network.  Then there is  the renegade unapproved trails like Xanadu and Tres Hombres.   Despite riding every year in Leavenworth we have always shied away from Xanadu due to it's reputation of being a little burly.  Well today with funky weather we checked it out.  It runs along the spine of a ridge through a burned out forest, so the soil should get enough sun and wind to dry out.   The pedal starts up Derby Canyon Rd, then hooks left onto a gated logging road that is a little more trail like.   The trail itself drops down the ridgeline with banked corners and a couple sections of steep slickrock and trail.  Overall trail is fairly rideable, but due to lots of use and not enough trail work it has a lot of braking bumps.  Since the loop is only about 6 miles we hopped in the car at the finish and relocated to the Ski Hill parking area in Leavenworth.   With soils getting dryer the Rosy Boa loop was great.   The climb trail is sweet, followed by the roller coaster downhill of Rosy Boa then finished on 4 The Boys.    Definitely enjoyed Rosy Boa better than Xanadu, but glad we finally ticked off Xanadu.   This was a good way to combine two rides that alone are not very long. 

Francine still on her bike

Trail 2 - Bike shot on Rosy Boa, Leavenworth Wa.

Francine on Rosy Boa