After a week of anticipation and careful observation of what the storm was doing in the cascades, we scored a golden and rare opportunity to ski on a bluebird day and on fluffy snow! Bob Young and I ventured out to Hoodoo where we thought the snow would be the deepest, with our light weight back-country gear. There was a solid 18-20 inch base, and we were sinking about 6 inches in the fresh snow. Up higher, under Ed chair we were sinking 8 inches. Given that we were at Hoodoo and some of the runs and roads were groomed we chose to preserve energy by climbing up on groomed stuff, and then we ran down in deep fluffy snow:-)))). So we climbed laps that gave us good exercise, and on the blissful downhills we refreshed our memory on how to do tele turns. About 5.5 miles of it and 1970 ft. elev gain. Not bad for the first day. There were about 20 AT skiers doing the same thing and looking stoked. And I saw a pair of cross country skiers. Hoodoo staff is preparing the facility for operations. The temperature got up to 35 F , which with light breeze was very comfortable. We were reminded how quickly temp drops when that sun gets lower on the horizon path. Snow start freezing quickly on our last climb as soon as it was in the shade, and so did our lips and hands.

Bianca Klar