[TR] Tatoosh Skiing Sunday 4/30/2006

[crazy_t]

Climb: Tatoosh Skiing Sunday 4-30-

 

Date of Climb: 4/30/2006

 

Trip Report:

Had a nice session this morning in the Tatoosh Range, with a few short laps. It was nice to get out, enjoyed sun, some corn, and good company.

 

Snow was kind of what I expected: last weeks melt/freeze had done a lot to consolidate the snowpack overall, especially the upper bit. Generraly we found a 4-6" "layer" of thicker consolidated snow on top that supported corn skiing w/o punching through in most areas. Below that, generally a deeper layer 1'+ of unconsolidated, wetter snow. Overall the snowpack is nice and deep. Saturday added a little fresh, maybe 1-2", that looked to have seen some wind, The effect today and tomorrow was that it filled in a lot of the incongruities in the surface and will make for a smoother ski on top in the next couple of days.

 

The road to the skin up is maintained and dry though closed just above the Narada Falls turnout. We didn't start up until 8:30 or so on snow, and with Sunday AM's sun and temps the lower stuff E aspects was already done. Higher of course thing were more solid, and good skiing was had above 5500' (we generally skied N facing slopes, adjusting towards or away from E aspects where it made for better turns) until we left for the road at 1pm. Below 5000' at that time lower stuff was pretty funky. The session seemed to be a balance between trying to find slopes that weren't too hard/rattly, while also not wanting to go too far the other way, where it felt like if it got too soft we'd auger through the top thicker layer.

 

If we get the anticipated weather this week (sun then cool at night), it should really help with the big picture of consolidating the pack. Saw some nice sized cornice falls off of the peaks, some of which had propagated larger wet slides, so hopefully more of that will get cleared out this week too.

 

A nice time, quick in and out, and Rainier was definitely looking very sweet conditions-wise. Looking forward to more turns this spring.

Edited May 1, 2006 by crazy_t