Saturday we made one of our latest departures ever, 11 am, for a day trip up to Steven’s Pass. Though instead of skiing at the resort we parked at the lot across the street and skinned up Skyline Ridge. Here’s a map of the area, marked are the two radio towers we passed:
It was a short trip, we only skinned up ~1,160 feet. But it was a good first trip to break in the Dynafit Manaslus I bought last season. One of the discoveries was that I didn’t adjust my bindings properly (here are the proper instructions, though where do I find a 6mm spacer??).
Here’s Joe all decked out in his new gear:
JJ wrote up the conditions for Turns All Year:
The good news: As usual there is a well trodden track up to the ridge that made the skinning effortless.
The bad news: Wind transport has made things really variable. The rain crust from last week has been scoured bare by the wind on eastern aspects. In the trees and on other aspects there were patches of goodness but we didn’t have the time or the willingness to work on finding where all the good snow had gone. Suffice to say, the ski back down to the car was pretty poor. I would be very concerned about wind loading and possible slides due to all the wind.
Sadly we are pulling the plug on our Cascade Powder Cats trip that we were planning on Wednesday because of the conditions.
I’ve got a few more photos on SmugMug.
Update: Thanks to JJ, what I need is called a feeler guage or some coins…