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Posaune

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Baker, Thursday:

The new snow from two days ago has skied down to a nice consistency. Hardly any ice is evident and the cold stuff on the ground is quite edgeable.

The Legendary Banked Slalom is this weekend. Qualifying begins Friday and the big race is on Sunday. This means lots of people. Get there early.
 
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noncrazycanuck

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good to know, was not aware it was happening this weekend, early is better
 
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noncrazycanuck

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Fun weekend at Baker
Work fouled up Thursday but Friday chased Posaune and a few others, very decent snow, light crowds. I think everyone had fun.
Cool on weekend but the lift lines stayed low despite the banked slalom race being on and our group of now 14 cluttering it up.
Nice to hang with with those that you first took skiing as kids even if you can't keep up with them partying or on slope and they are just humoring you.
Looking forward to skiing with the upcoming set of rippers pretty sure they will be even better.
 
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noncrazycanuck

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this week more snow fell in my yard than at Whistler.
Sunny and cool. other than in the usual scrapped off high traffic areas the snow still held up ok . Bumps are starting to get fairly big in a number of places.

past due for a refresh. unfortunately not much in forecast .
The deep freeze has ended in the Rockies good time for a road trip
 

Posaune

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Maybe Whistler isn't forecast to get anything, but Baker is going off as I type. There should be several new inches by tomorrow. Of course, I can't go tomorrow, though I went yesterday and today (as the dump began). I'll see what's left on Thursday in the sun, then more snow after that.
 

PNWRod

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I had a blast at Baker on Sunday. Really nice chalky snow for the day. Tried gunners and it was fine but I hit it a little late after the sun bake late morning. For a narrow "cat track" the canyon was fun as it had nice snow fluff on top and it made for some fun GS down the trough (nobody on it when we zipped through). I was jealous of the guys skinning up and hitting the pow up high ( I think it was called Hemispheres). I definitely wanted to get up there too. We spend the afternoon on the shady side skiing multiple unique tracks down Pan Face. Lots of fun ways down just watch the cliffs. We took The Chute a couple times but it got ebraked off by the afternoon and didn't ski as nice as first thing in the morning. The area between the Chute and North Face was too tempting and of course we ended up in the scary section of town. Fortunately, we followed tracks over to a medium drop which got us back down to safe skiing again. @Posaune- thanks again for the tips!!
 

Tom Co.

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Crystal Mountain Wed 2/20 Pow
The drive up from the claw was slow, 40 - 45 mph because of snow on the road. It was a pig day. Lots of powder pigs. As usual, all the obvious stuff was skied up in an hour. There was a legitimate foot of pretty darn light powder. The early morning groomers had 6 to 8 inches on them. Upper mountain visibility was challenging, especially early. It kind of came and went during the day. There were no lift lines to speak of except the early lineup on chair six.

Now for the good stuff. Everything off piste skied really well. Memorial, far side of Iceberg, Hamburger, Powder Bowl, my favorite tree lines in Northway, and last, but definitely not least, Employee Housing. Some runs were cut up but not skied out. The snow got a little bit heavy, especially lower, but it all skied just great. There were a lot of moguls underneath the powder especially on the front side.

I have a lot of mediocre days this season but this wasn't one of them. This was stellar.

3+/3
 
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noncrazycanuck

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A minor 4" refresh at Whistler overnight, much needed.
not even a foot fell this week, quite firm.

LL KH and Revy had similar conditions past week but with cooler temps and less base.
Largest road side snow banks between Vancouver and Calgary is surprisingly just west of Lake Louise not on the Coquihalla or Rodger's Pass .
Lower elevations everywhere seem to have lower snow banks than normal for this time of year.
skiing on the coast is better.

Also skied Nakiska for my first time with the grandaughter's last week
We did not see the Grizzly that some skiers woke up in that area same day, only heard about it on the news later.
no one expects to see those in February.
 

David Chaus

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Stevens has received nada in the past few days, and maybe 1” expected today. That’s it. Oregon, Californian and most of the rest of North America getting dumped on, and PNW getting zilch. Oh well, we’re mastering groomer skills.
 

Posaune

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Been up to Baker the last two days. While the snow is hard, it's not ice. There were some good turns to be had, and some not so good ones too. We had 2" of fresh today, but it didn't really help things. I head to Stevens next Wednesday through Friday for my annual get-together with an old high school buddy. I hope we get some new by then, but it doesn't look good right now.
 

PNWRod

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Crystal 2/26. I went up for a couple hours in the morning. I started on the groomers and found it was hard packed...some might call it icy, but the edges were soft and skied well. My second run I decided to try the trees and honestly I was expecting crusty with a little dust on top. NOPE...to my surprise it skied very well, soft and fluffy, from 5-6" to boot top most areas. It turned out to be a fantastic morning with very few skiers anywhere on the mountain. Too bad I had to head out by noon and go to work.
 

Posaune

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Today at Baker was sunny and beautiful. Good skiing and low crowds.

As we were riding chair 5 to head back to White Salmon for lunch, just as we crested the top of Gabl's and could see the ridge to the east of Hemispheres we saw a guy ski down the ridge and launch off the big cliff there with a para-glider. He dropped down and then did a flip before he disappeared. The few people on the chair went nuts! We recognized him later because he had the biggest backpack I've ever seen on a skier and we saw him going out of bounds to do it again. (He wasn't wearing a hat, and he had gray hair!) I've never witnessed this before. It was pretty amazing. The ridge is pictured below, but this pic is a bit to the left of the cliff, so you get only an idea of the terrain.


IMG_0761.jpg
 

John O

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Beautiful day up at Snoqualmie today. I was alone and hadn't ever skied any of the non-Alpental areas in my 11 years here in Seattle, so I decided to check them out. There's better terrain than I had been led to believe, especially in the Central/East areas. I spent most of my time in East/Hyak as the snow was better and the lines were shorter. Had a ton of fun in some firm but edge-able bumps over there. Blowdown was fun, and skier's right of the Hyak Face was fun. The highlight of the day though, is that it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We don't get days like this often around here.

baNnHBO.jpg
 

Posaune

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^^^ I did a lot of skiing at Ski Acres (Summit Central) at night after high school got out when I was a kid. Night skiing tickets were $5 (early 70s) and we could get there before 5:00, ski for a few hours and be home in bed by 10. I lived in Issaquah, so it was a fairly quick drive up and back. It really helped my development as a skier and was a whole lot of fun.
 
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noncrazycanuck

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Whistler has been more like skiing a drier interior hill than the coast lately.
Despite no significant fresh snow for most of February the colder temps have kept the snow in reasonable shape peak to valley. Bumps are getting big.
First time I've used narrower skis this year

What was very noticeable though is how spoiled we must be. Seems many prefer to wait a bit to use their fatties than bother skiing a bit of firm.
On a beautiful sunny weekend I don't think we had more than a 10 chair wait anywhere. Often was ski on and we frequently were the only ones in entire bowls.
Quite the change from the crowds that would have been out on a sunny weekend back in the skinny ski days
 

David Chaus

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Skiing Stevens yesterday (Sunday), it seems that without 6-8 week ski school classes, the crowds are far fewer. This is in addtion to lack of powder day frenzy; with sunny weather and firm groomers the crowds are light.

I was skiing with a friend, and after a half-dozen fast runs I thought maybe it might be time for lunch. Nope, it was only 10:45. We were pretty tired when we quit at 3pm.

The weather was beautiful, though it’d be nice to get some snow.
 

Tom Co.

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To John O, yes there are some decent short steep pitches at the Summit. You can even get some sneaky powder by going night skiing to West when it has been closed during the day. I did that earlier this year starting on the Wild Side lift which had about 6 inches of untracked, then taking the crossover to Central and skiing the Triple 60 and Silverfir lifts. After that I hopped in my car drove to Apintal and finished up the night there. The nice thing about night skiing is it's always good visibility and never any big lines.

Here are some pictures from Crystal Mountain yesterday.

Powder Bowl P1040454.jpg

Green Valley

P1040457.jpg

One of my favorite bump runs in Green Valley. It is steeper than it looks

P1040448.jpg

Nobody was skiing, the place was just empty.
 

David Chaus

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0609A05C-6C47-4AFB-A04F-777EEB662701.jpeg

Stevens today, Thursday. A couple inches of new snow, hardly anyone there at 10am. This pic is from 7th Heaven, kind of between The Meadows and Clound 9. Great stuff, even if it wasn’t that deep. It was still mostly a mogul day, but some nice untracked lines in places. I spent a lot of the day on the back side, which had more scrapping sounds around noon.
 

Tom Co.

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More from Stevens on Thursday
Moderating temperature, reasonable visibility, and enough new snow to make off piste skiing good. Oh yeah, and no crowd.
We skied 4 inches to 6 inches new light snow, the higher you went the better it was. There still is that nagging frozen layer underneath that you'd bottom out on but once you got used to it it skied really well. Some memorable spots were Seventh Heaven, Tye Bowl, Big Chief Bowl, and a lot short and sweet tree runs. Except for the very top trees, off piste on the backside wasn't as good. There were more chicken heads and frozen rats underneath the new snow. This just hasn't been a good year for Pegasus, Orion, and Andromeda. What groomers we did we're good early and getting down to the ice layer later.
A very good day
Fun factor 4/5
Stoke-o-meter 2.5/5
 

David Chaus

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After skiing, I went to my office, then as I was driving home last night it started dumping, I was driving at 15 mph the few miles because my LED headlights were lighting up the mass of big fluffy snowflakes, that I could barely see the road or where I was.

This is what I woke up to today. I don’t know if Stevens got any overnight snow.

8D8494CE-9C08-4342-BBD5-E001C4B38569.jpeg
 

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