Pacific NW/AK/BC 2017-18 PNW Weather, Conditions, and Stoke

[DanoT]

Driving off the mountain (Sun Peaks) at 5:30 today there was a pretty steady stream of uphill traffic and while I couldn't see license plates , with it being MLK weekend I'm guessing a lot of them were from WA.

It started snowing lightly around noon and still going off. We always seem to have fresh snow and excellent conditions when the Yanks show up.Only problem is the Seattle skiers seem to be better skiers with more savvy as to finding the pow than our usual gorbie Aussie crowd.

 

[noncrazycanuck]

glad you mentioned its the US Holiday I was planning on skiing tomorrow.
Always hate it when I show up and find its an American holiday weekend.
Don't mind sharing the slopes just don't like getting surprised by a lift line when it could have been avoided

 

[Bad Bob]

We always seem to see the Canuk folk down this way come Holiday too. That is just ducky, we are happy to share.

 

[noncrazycanuck]

plus one on that,
don't think most skiers ever mind sharing slopes. I also enjoy showing visitors around if your ever up this way. .
My comment was specific to Whistler. There are a few lifts here which tend to be crowd magnets.
if you ski to them before your aware it is a holiday weekend you can find yourself standing in a pretty good size line.
I prefer to avoid those lines by different lift selection when I know about it.

 

[fullStack]

Crystal skied pretty well today after some morning hot pow gave way to sunny skies. Terrain off chair 6 seems like it won't ever fill in this year.




Most everywhere else was easy spring-like hero groomers and slush bumps until things started to lock up around 3 pm as the sun disappeared.

 

[noncrazycanuck]

Whistler was 100% sunshine and another temp inversion. Starting to sound like a broken record.
Crowds were easily by passed but there were a lot up for the US holiday.

Every chair seemed to have someone from elsewhere but overall it has not seemed as busy this year despite all that doom and gloom in California Utah and Colorado, I am starting to think there may not be as many local skiers this year.

Bumps were firm and even glazed on a lot of groomers. Off piste could use a good refresh.

 

[Posaune]

Baker yesterday:
Clear skies and warm temperatures (up to around 50F) made for beautiful views and ugly snow. At the beginning of the day the entire ski area was a sheet of ice. As the low January sun played across the hill some of it began to thaw for some reasonable turns, but it was limited in area. The groomers were made up of small chunks of ice. Add to this the fact that Chair 8 is out of service for an unspecified amount of time due to a snow cat running into the cable (at least that's the rumor I heard, no info from the ski area) and that it was Sunday of MLK weekend, and they were holding the locals' trials for the Legendary Banked Slalom and it was a bit of a s*%t show. I left after a couple of hours.

 

[David Chaus]

Stevens was actually pretty good. For spring skiing. Groomers were firm in the morning, soft piles with smallish moguls in the late afternoon. Off piste was a mess, with the fresh snow earlier in the week not getting skied out enough to consolidate, you can get stuck easily, as one or two of my students discovered. Otherwise groomers were soft, except in a few high traffic areas where it got scraped to slippery hardpack. Bump runs such as Roller Coaster/Gun Tower were nice.

I can see where Baker would be messier, less grooming and with C-8 not available, easily crowded.

 

[Posaune]

Yeah, David. I can see that Stevens would have been superior yesterday. Even if the snow conditions were the same in the morning, Stevens' back side would have been nice spring skiing as soon as the sun was up. Baker has its face to the north so at this time of year there just aren't that many places that get much direct sun. Upper Canuks and Honkers were the only reliable non-groomed slopes yesterday morning. It probably got better as the day wore on, but with C8 out, the line on C5 was ridiculous, and since I parked at White Salmon once I got to the car I wasn't going back. Once the weekend is over the loss of 8 won't make much difference for crowds. Looks like a pretty decent week ahead, weather-wise.

 

[fullStack]

Crystal was windy, warm and wild all day. It was windy enough on the ridge tops that the powder monkeys had to get in a tuck and skate downhill to get started. One of them even got blown over. Sunny areas started to soften by 10 am and from then on it was time for slushy roostertails on the groomers or bashing big soft bumps.

Coverage is still an issue but it did make for good entertainment while riding up Rex to watch so many people attempting to negotiate all the foliage and dirt in the middle of Sunnyside.

 

[noncrazycanuck]

over a foot of new at Whistler yesterday, over a meter in forecast by weekend. Back to the normal PNW weather.
end of the snow complaints and start of the visibility complaints

 

[slowrider]

Bring on the face shots.

 

[Tom Co.]

Stevens- Thur 1-18

It was a bonus day at Stevens. 6 inches of new at the base 8 inches on top. The snow on top was pretty darn good, then there was a mid region that had a bit of rain crust on top, then lower down it got okay again. Off piste skiing was the best it's been in a long while. You could bottom out on the firm ice layer, and some of the mogul troughs we're icy, but that didn't deter the fun factor much. The sun actually came out for a while and at other times there was filtered sunshine, so the visibility was good. It did start snowing about 1 o'clock or so. The coverage was the best I've seen at Stevens this year. No rocks and very few sticks. The backside trees we're thick, one and done. Overall a really fun day. visibility = 1 snow = .75 crowd = 1
2.75 out of 3

 

[Posaune]

Baker - Thur 1-18
The conditions were similar to those at Stevens, except less ice (there was a little) and it kept snowing hard all day. I got there late, maybe 10:30 but there was lots of good snow still on Chair 5, and Chair 6 was on wind hold. About a half hour later 6 opened and the skiing was excellent. Everyone went to 6 and skied it down but after it had been mostly chewed up I went over to 5 again where nobody was skiing and the heavy snowfall had filled in another couple of inches, so it was first tracks all over!
Best day for me this season.

 

[Tom Co.]

Stevens- Fri
Today was very much like yesterday except that Skyline chair had a big race course on it which took up about half of the runs. It was a bit more crowded, but then again it was Friday. Only a couple inches of new. Skiing was fun. Seventh was the only place that had challenging visibility, but hey, we skied a treeline. Tye Bowl still needs more snow. The Tye lift line was pretty good. Big Chief Bowl was nice.

 

[Posaune]

Baker - Fri
Better than yesterday. Lots of new and it kept coming all day. Nice soft turns. I met up with Noncrazycanuk and his crew and we had some great turns! Thanks to the entire bunch for a great day and a couple of good beers for après.

 

[Posaune]

Baker - Sat.

Quite a day.

Oh, my. What a crowd. The conditions were excellent with a foot of new and the entire Pacific Northwest decided to go to Mt. Baker. I have never seen the lines so long at the ticket window and possibly on the chairs too. Chair 8 seems to be down for the season as far as I can tell, it's been out for weeks, and that made things even more crowded.

I took my grandson (10 years, beginner) and planned to just ski the bunny slopes and protect him from out of control folks as much as possible. No problems there, but we did have a BIG learning experience. We had just gone down a half pipe on Chair 7, which is really just for beginner fun. At the end of the feature there is a road/cat track through the trees to get back to the base of the chair. As we were going along this track (it traverses a fairly steep side slope) my little wedger hit something with his uphill ski which sent him 90* across the cat track and straight down the steep side slope head first. We have been having some big dumps the last few days and the snow was deep and completely soft, nobody skis there, ever. Well he ended up poised on his side in a position that if he moved he would go head first into a tree well. This was not good.

I was able to ski to his side (if I took them off I would have been lost in the deep as well) and began to help extricate him. A couple of snowboarders saw us and stopped to help. Didn't get their names, but they're heroes in my book. All we lost was a mitten, and I replaced it with better gloves later. Somebody told the ski patrol but by the time they arrived we had taken care of the problem. I talked to the boy about tree wells and getting back on the horse and, after some hot chocolate in the lodge, we skied a few more runs and had fun.

All was well, but I never want to have to do that again!

 

[slowrider]

There's so much negativity these days. It's good to hear about 2 young folks that stepped up.

 

[David Chaus]

Stevens on Saturday: parking lots filled up early due to race teams coming from all over the PNW, and while the SG course took out a couple runs on Skyline/Hogsback, the lines overall weren’t too bad. Snow was the nicest I’ve seen all year; 4” new overnight and 7” in the past 2 days. According to Open Snow there could be a couple new inches overnight, 3-7” during the day tomorrow and another 3-5” Sunday evening. They will have races, but I think I it’ll be a DH on the back side so more terrain on the front should be available.

I was able to get my morning students into some off-piste experiences as well as our usual skills and drills (and fun). In the afternoon a clinic where we kind of let ‘er rip off piste, snow was all cut up but still pretty decent coverage and consistently. After tomorrow I’ll feel better about venturing into Tye Bowl.

 

[dbostedo]

There's so much negativity these days. It's good to hear about 2 young folks that stepped up.

I just want to note that "snowboarders" doesn't necessarily mean "young folks".