Con Anditions on Muir snowfield

[JoshK]

Has anybody been up to Rainer recently? Is there any snow to speak of at Paradise? If not, how high must one go to encounter any sort of snow? I'm itching to take a friend out for an intro to some ski touring. Any other ideas for locations are welcome; I noticed during the storms the past two days WA pass seemed to stay mostly snow, according to the WSDOT.

 

thanks!

-josh

[ilookeddown]

I went up there yesterday to attempt to get some turns in. I was able to skin from the parking lot (barely). It was raining and with the freezing level around 9k today I am sure most of the snow has melted away for the most part until you get up to pan point. Freezing level should drop down to about 6K tomorrow though.

[ivan]

are you capable of doing anything other than epicing on the muir snowfield in november there joshua?

[JoshK]

What better place to Epic? I figure if shit goes downhill and I kick the bucket, the Muir Snowfield is the best place to be for optimal postmortem shit-talking material about me on cc. ;-)

 

Actually, it's about the only place I could think of that is easily accessible and able to provide easy terrain for a first time skinner.

 

Ilook, thanks for the info, hopefully tonight and tomorrow the weather can help me out a bit.

 

[ilookeddown]

I heard the park was closed due to flooding today. Also, due to 6" of snow they got Monday night / Tuesday morning it took them until 11:30am to open the gate Tuesday.

 

Good luck.

[Norman_Clyde]

Paradise is shockingly bare of snow as of today. Hardly a patch to be seen. Skinning was not an option below Pebble Creek. The only reasonable skiing was on the snowfield itself, which was not as bad as you might imagine: the hard boilerplate up high still took an edge, there was an almost forgiving section lower down, and very little breakable crust. A big lenticular descended and swallowed the peak at sunset, suggesting that conditions may change soon.