Mt. Baker ski area, WA yesterday. image: frankie/snowbrains

by Frankie

We knew it was going to be good at Baker on Sunday. Everyone in Washington did, or they just weren’t paying attention.

With heavy snow falling on Saturday night and temps dropping into the mid twenties we were all ready for a killer day. As we rolled into the parking lot, we could see that the tracks from the day before were completely erased. Clean slate.

14″ in 12 hours and 26 degrees.

It doesn’t get much better than that at Baker and then, on cue, the clouds broke to full blue and it was the elusive clear, cold and deep combination that is such a treasure in the northwest.

We hiked into chair 5 for the opener.

After 2 super deep and blower runs down Gabl’s we ventured off into the trees to avoid the masses. After a few more runs in-bounds, we stopped at the van to switch out our resort boards for touring gear.

We headed up to chair 1 and dropped into the swift creek slackcountry. There were various avy classes and random groups to share the zone with, but the gully we selected was untouched and bottomless.

After a couple of skinning laps in Swift creek, we headed up to the base of the The Chimney on Table mountain and took one longer continuous run back down to Bagley lakes where we switched back to skins one more time before heading to the van.

The drive back down to Glacier felt shorter than normal with all of the powder buzz from the day still lingering.

The beers at Grahm’s tasted extra refreshing as we caught up with some friends and heard about their equally awesome day. December 4th was one to remember at Baker. With cold temps and frequent snow in the forecast, we are hoping for more excellent riding soon.