Steven's Pass - 04.17.09

Ken and I opted to use our free passes to Steven's Pass on the last Friday of operations. The weather wasn't forecast to be great, but we were going anyway. After all, you can't be a Pacific Northwest skier without skiing in the rain at least once a year.

The first ride up the chair was cloudy, but no precip. The second ride up involved rain that turned into "Wintry Mix" near the top. By the third time up, we had that precip freezing on the outsides of our shell pants.

First chair ride up.

The snow was decent on groomed runs and corn like at times with icy patches and some thicker patches. Anything that was not groomed was heavy, wet and hard to turn in. We stuck to Hog Heaven, and Barrier Ridge for our first few runs then decided to see what the other side of the ridge was like.

We rode the Tye Mill Chair up to the top and then went down Gemini which felt like the best run of the day so far. There was no one on the backside, and the weather was somewhat better. That changed, and the wind kicked up and the rides up the Jupiter Chair had us getting blasted in the face with icy pellets. After 3-4 runs down time was running out on the backside (they close the lifts at 3:15pm) so we decided to get back on the front of the ridge.

We had a few super enjoyable runs down The Crest Trail and Skid Road before making a few last runs down Skyline as the skies turned blue and we warmed up and dried out.

Overall we had a great day. The snow was pretty good where it had been groomed, or where lots of people were skiing. We stuck to all blue runs as the black diamonds were not groomed and not too many people were skiing them. The snow in those areas was not appealing, and neither Ken nor I were looking to get injured on our last day of lift served skiing this season.

Last chair of day.