Norse Peak, Sat Feb 19 2011

Oh baby! After a foot+ of fresh fell in the east slopes Monday and Tuesday this week, the temperatures stayed cold and gave the snow a chance to settle. Loern and I headed to the Crystal lot Saturday morning and were skinning up Norse by 9:30. After a bit of bushwacking at the beginning (seems standard for Norse) we hooked up with the skin track made earlier in the week and followed that all the way to the top.

Because the snow had come in with high south-westerly winds, the N and NE slopes were a bit windloaded, although people had skiied the east-facing Cement Basin earlier in the week and there was no visible slide activity. The ridge tops were pretty scoured, but in the trees and the shallow valleys the snow was deep and unconsolidated.

The day was absolutely perfect. About 20 degrees and very little wind. It had blown up to 50mph the night before but once the sun came out it really calmed down. The views were incredible with Rainier, Adams and the entire Cascade range out in full glory.

Bottomless powder was our reward for the climb - the top 1000' was superb, then below that the sun started affecting the snow.

Crystal Mountain

Crystal delivered today with bluebird skies and 6" of new snow. By the time I got my lazy ass up there it was 11:30, but I was welcomed by full sun and short lift lines. I went and hiked the King and had a good run down the north side, kind of a dust-on-crust experience. It became a little more filled in further down and was very nice.

Then I did one off the south side - not as good. The sun had affected it and it was pretty chunky.

Another on the north side, then Green Valley and Exterminator to finish the (short) day. Glorious!

This is Silver King from the Forest Queen chair. It only takes about 30 minutes to get there from the top of Campbell Basin.