After sitting on the couch for a couple days I was getting a little restless. Without any friends able to skip work I posted on “partners wanted” on Turns All Year. Within a day or two I was overwhelmed with requests to go skiing.
On Wednesday I picked up Scott who wanted to hit up Snoqualmie Mountain. I was psyched since I hadn’t skied Snoqualmie Mountain yet.
You start Snoqualmie Mountain at the Alpental maintenance lot. Simply cross the road and head into the woods.
We both found the skin up challenging to say the least because the conditions were very firm! While Scott had issues with his skins staying on, I, after falling a few times, fell again but started to slide downhill. Let’s just say I really regretted wearing only a t-shirt and no gloves because when you fall 25 feet with no protection it really hurts. Scott had an easier go of things when he put his ski crampons on. I, wished I had brought my ski crampons. And then the tip of my Dynafit Speeskin broke! Fortunately zip ties saved the day. Looks like I’ll be needing to buy a Dynafit Speedskin Fix Long.
At 5200′ we got out of the woods and I thought things would get easier. But we still had 1000′ feet of hard skiing, kicking in every step.
After lunch at 6200′ I was expecting the descent to suck but it was actually great. The dust over a hard layer was very skiable, we just had to dodge all the old frozen wet slide debris. Lower down things got heavier and wetter.
Weather was nice. At times sunny, then cloudy, then snowy then back so sun. No rain.