With only one day to ski in all of August, I called in two guys who I knew would be stoked to get out: Amar and Blake. Accessing snow from Paradise on Mt. Rainier is the lowest-commitment this time of year (August 20). It also has the most favorable skiing:suffer ratio. So we slogged up the standard climbing route to Muir with everyone else. We cut away at 8700′ to the top of the Paradise glacier and skied down on surprisingly decent snow.

As expected, the sun cups were prevalent but not nearly as bad as on the Muir Snowfield. The snow was dirty up top but perfect corn for about 1,000ft in the middle. A few sections of #LinkingPatches and before we knew it we were reunited with the trail after skiing nearly 2500′ of vert! Not bad August. Not bad at all.

Amar likes to stop on the way with his fancy camera. This was taken with my 3-year old iPhone. I’m sure his pic is much more stunning.

Amar rocking the sun hat.

Blake only wears his fancy hat when he is STOKED. Don’t let that frown fool you.

Amar showing us how it’s done.

I am just so happy to be outside!

Bonus: National Geographic Moment skiing past two lounging mountain goats. We had to ski right next to them (it was the only way we could go, or we would have given more space) and in doing so we startled them. They took off running down the snow to a protective rock ridge. Seeing them bound through the snow was pretty incredible – sorry I don’t have it on film!