Stevens Pass, WA 4/12/2018

[tseeb]

Stevens Pass, WA 4/12/2018

Somebody on another ski forum posted the following about Mt Hood Meadows on 4/12. "Ho hum ANOTHER powder day on Mt Hood (Mt Hood Meadows). Actually one of the best days this year."

Meadows (and Bachelor and Crystal) was on my short list for open places to stop and ski on my way North this week and would have saved me a couple of hundred miles of driving Wed. night. But once I found out that @Posaune would be at Stevens and it was the closest open WA place to ski to YVR where I need to be this AM and I'd avoid going through both Portland and Seattle and a lot of boring I-5 by going up the E side of Cascades, I bought a $39 Stevens Pass ticket that committed me to going there. Stevens reported 3" new on a 138" base which had gotten soft then re-frozen.

We found some decent new snow early, but there was a lot of new snow (way deeper than dust) on crust and even some sun and wind-crust on new snow on crust. We did a lot of looking around (only Double Diamond/Southern Cross lift was closed), but mostly were finding only a few good turns and a lot of challenging snow, especially as day wore on. Rode 21 lifts and skied over 21.5K vertical between 9 and 2. Pictures are Posaune in Exhibition Trees. Will add more when I have more time.

 

[tseeb]

Not that much more to add besides a few more pictures. The first is my 15 year-old SUV hitting 220K miles 100 miles into trip (which included taking my wife between her work and our grandchildren's school concert for grandparents that added about 20 miles) to Steven Pass. From San Jose to Stevens Pass, my drive was about 900 miles. I did most of it on Wednesday from 12:30 PM to 2:00 AM (with a stop for a beer with a friend in Bend, OR about 9 PM). I slept a little over 3 hours in the back at a rest stop between Yakima and Ellensburg, where I spent over 30 minutes at McDonald's before driving another 2 hours to ski area.

The next picture is my SUV at Stevens Pass. I arrived in time to change and boot up and get my ticket before meeting Posaune (from EpicSki and now PugSki) well before 9 AM opening.View attachment 1Posaume has skied Stevens for more than 40 years and patrolled there at one time. His family used to live in Seattle and they built a primitive cabin near Skycomish, about 15 miles W of Stevens Pass that he now owns. He lives in Bellingham and splits his skiing between Stevens and Mt Baker. Picture is woods between cabin and river. I was trying to show the moss which gets very thick in this area at 1100' elevation where they get a lot of rain and snow.