And then winter came.
It happened. We got the news earlier this week. A cold, arctic storm was coming down from the north into eastern Washington, the Idaho Panhandle, and western Montana. This was the weather pattern we saw often last winter, and never this winter. Until this week.
I woke up Saturday and glanced at the snow report for Mission Ridge. Uhh.
I did a double-take. I was expecting 12-15 inches, so I was a little stunned to see 22! Twenty-two inches in 24 hours is, for lack of a better word, insane. The drive up was awesome. I had skied a few laps two days earlier and it looked like late spring. There were dirt patches all along the road and under the lifts. Not anymore.
The line for Chair 4 looked, uhh, a lot like the 26" in 24-hour Saturday last year.
A little longer. Or I was a little further back. Whatever, once ski patrol opened the mountain it didn't take long to be whisked up by the little Doppelmeyer up to the goods.
K was gracious and stayed home with Squish while I burned out my quads skiing two feet of powder. Talking to her on the phone, we agreed to call a babysitter so we could get out together for a ski date the next day. The forecast called for sun and there would still be plenty of powder.
We took a few warm-up runs. At the summit, the winds were pretty intense and some weather clung to the Enchantments and Stuart range.
The view north up the Columbia never gets old.
A little further west, the North Cascades...
K headed down from the top of Chair 3.
Then it was time to go hiking. Up the ridge.
K had never gone up Windy Ridge and I wanted her to have some fun skiing 2' of fresh, mostly-untracked snow.
The light was cool and weather was moving in. Time to take one final run and go home to relieve the sitter. If only we had a winter full of these kinds of storms. But we'll take what we can get, even in mid-March. It really was an epic weekend.
*** Epilogue... And then the mountain closed. Stupid COVID-19. Glad we got to go out with a bang. We'll have to find time to make it up there to hike with our skis while the spring skiing is good...
I woke up Saturday and glanced at the snow report for Mission Ridge. Uhh.
I did a double-take. I was expecting 12-15 inches, so I was a little stunned to see 22! Twenty-two inches in 24 hours is, for lack of a better word, insane. The drive up was awesome. I had skied a few laps two days earlier and it looked like late spring. There were dirt patches all along the road and under the lifts. Not anymore.
The line for Chair 4 looked, uhh, a lot like the 26" in 24-hour Saturday last year.
A little longer. Or I was a little further back. Whatever, once ski patrol opened the mountain it didn't take long to be whisked up by the little Doppelmeyer up to the goods.
K was gracious and stayed home with Squish while I burned out my quads skiing two feet of powder. Talking to her on the phone, we agreed to call a babysitter so we could get out together for a ski date the next day. The forecast called for sun and there would still be plenty of powder.
We took a few warm-up runs. At the summit, the winds were pretty intense and some weather clung to the Enchantments and Stuart range.
The view north up the Columbia never gets old.
A little further west, the North Cascades...
K headed down from the top of Chair 3.
Then it was time to go hiking. Up the ridge.
K had never gone up Windy Ridge and I wanted her to have some fun skiing 2' of fresh, mostly-untracked snow.
The light was cool and weather was moving in. Time to take one final run and go home to relieve the sitter. If only we had a winter full of these kinds of storms. But we'll take what we can get, even in mid-March. It really was an epic weekend.
*** Epilogue... And then the mountain closed. Stupid COVID-19. Glad we got to go out with a bang. We'll have to find time to make it up there to hike with our skis while the spring skiing is good...
