Cold, calm weather, a stable snowpack, and even a day of sunshine in the mountains....it was a great weekend to get in some touring up at Snoqualmie Pass.
Ross, Mike, Becky, and I headed up to Kendall Peak on Saturday morning, got in two runs on the upper southwest slopes and one long run down the north side. The slog back up the north side was a little tiresome, especially the final bootpack back up to the ridge...skiing knee-deep powder is fun, swimming back uphill through it...not so much.
Sunday, Becky and I headed back up....we were pooped from Saturday's 5000ft of climbing, but the weather was too nice not to get back out. We didn't have any particular desintation in mind, so we just toodled up towards Chair Peak figuring we'd ski the north slope and go from there. Unforunately the wind must've really come cranking through there recently because the 2ft of stable powder we'd had on Kendall wasn't anywhere to be found. We skied from the upper notch on a mixed bag of variable wind crusts and then we poked around above the Snow Lake cliffs till we found the entrance to a fun little chute we hadn't skied before. Great chute, steep turns, but more wind damaged snow. Once at Snow Lake we just climbed back up to the divide and made quick work of the slide back to Alpental. Short day, not particularly great snow, but finally having a day in the sun was well worth the drive.
Back home, we had enough daylight and dry weather to take our backpacks out into the yard for a 'test firing' of our airbags. We picked up ABS avalanche airbags this season and hadn't pulled the ripcord yet to see just what they'd do....hopefully we never have to use these things for real. Kind of a funny thing though to have a massive balloon appear over your head in just a few seconds!
