The North Side Isn't Always Better

It hasn't snowed in awhile around here.  In fact, it's been getting kind of warm.  So when we were talking about touring this weekend, trying to find some gorgeous powder runs wasn't even in the picture:  not only would they have been tracked out over this past week (terrible, I know), but they would be covered in sun crust and possibly experiencing some wet snow sloughs.  Instead, we decided to go tree skiing on the north side of Needle peak, where we would be in safe terrain and have snow that hadn't seen any sun.

Well.  I guess that all the snow on top of the forest sees the sun, gets heated up and mushy, then falls to the forest floor and freezes into death chunks.  Within the first 2 minutes of our skin up, it was obvious skiing was pretty much out.

Not to mention the surface hoar that we saw from the parking lot.

Wow.

In any case, we had already driven all the way out there, so we went for a bit of a tour along the ridge.  Lots of ideas were generated for future trips when skiing is better.

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