PIC-Less TR: Stevens Pass 11/11/06
First turns of the season!!! Yay. I had so much fun today and I do have pics however they are hella old school or in other words, theyre on actual film.
So I decide last night that I have had enough of not skiing and that it was time to get started again so I called all my skiing and snowboarding buddies and told them we needed to roll out tommorow. Half dont belive in answering their cell phones, 25% were probably too drunk to notice their cell phones ringing and 25% told me that they couldnt go for some reason. I was thinking WTF why can nobody can go, that sucks.
So this morning I wake up at 5:30 and get my shit together which consists of ghetto rigging some old too short trash skis(1080's) to my small camelbak pack and evicting the rats from my boots. Then around 6:30 I go wake up my mother and inform her that I did not want to drive up their alone and since nobody else could go with me she was going snowboarding today. So after about 2 hours of yelling at her to get ready and missing 3 departure "deadlines" we finally leave my house at 8:30am. The first part of the drive up was pretty nice, I stopped at the sultan bakery which was packed so I "created" my own parking space. When I went inside some local dude was so kind as to inform me that where I parked wasnt actually a parking space, I nodded and let him know that I did indeed know that. When I got to the counter I kinda went crazy and ordered a million lbs of sugar in the form of 5 pastrys/doughnuts and was back on the road. The road was clear and dry for most of the way up but people traveling up there should be aware that the road is damaged right by the Mt. Index cafe and you will have to slow down at least if not stop completely. Once we got past skykomish it was about 40 degrees and raining. It shifted to snow after that major curve past scenic and there was abunch of consoldated snow on the road way. I started to slide once and that kinda freaked me out so I went a little slower the rest of the way. When I first saw the parking lot I was shocked. It was completely full, feeling a little disappointed by the number of people there, I pulled into the upper lot which was semi-plowed. I got ready to go and started to walk up the road above the tye creek lodge.
Once I got there I was shocked by how few people were out there compared to the number of people parked. I only saw like 6-7 other people around and later learned that it was employee orientation today which is why there were so many cars. Big cheif looked good but coverage was a little lacking so we made a bee line straight for nicest looking snow which happend to be the run to the right of hogsback, called hog heaven I think. Our plan was to hike up hogheaven and then up to the top of sky line but at the top of the run, hogheaven?, I was ready to ski some so I climbed up the big hump on lookers left and laid some nice looking tracks through virgin pow. On my way back up I ran into a guy that said he had been all over the mountain and we were at the best place. all the steeper runs werent covered and all the mellower runs didnt give the speed needed to ski the knee to thigh deep snow. On the mosture level the snow seemed to fall somewhere between powder and typical cascade concrete. Any way while trying to ski my first run in months down deep deep snow on tiny skis I crashed a few times and and got snow all down my jacket (does it count as a face shot if you faceplant?). On the second run down I figured out the only possible way to move my 6'3" 180lbs body through the deep snow on 171cm skis, I adopted some back seat steeze that would put Highway Star to shame. I basically sat on the .5ft of ski sticking out behind my bindings. I lapped this run 6 times and by the last time there where a few other people out with me, but I had already tracked up all the fresh snow:FIREdevil. The conditions were very similar to skiing 18" of fresh ontop of hard crust only the hard crust was made up of rocks and trees. I heard some guy shrieking on his first run down because he had brought his brand new skis up with him...:rolleyes2. When I left there where a ton more people up there and it was snowing really hard which bodes well for the comming season. As usuall I did not see one cop between Gold Bar and the Pass so its pretty safe to drive quickly.
I know, worthless with out pics. Ill post them when they get developed but hopefully I provided some usefull info in terms of road conditions and snow conditions.
Cheers,
Philip
