After an exciting start to the regular, lift-accessed ski season (wherein I nearly missed month 97 because of a clerical error), I enjoyed six glorious days of uphill and downhill skiing in December.

Beginning December 14, I had one day in bounds, one day sidecountry, and four days uphilling it. Bonus: I got to ski 5/10 days from Dec 22-31!

Saturday, December 14, 2019 – Crystal Mountain Sidecountry
One of the first days that Crystal was open, Cory, Nikki, Theresa, and I went in-bounds only to discover the Skill to Send Ratio problem. After skiing a single run on the upper mountain in-bounds, we bailed and skinned laps in the sidecountry, opting to skin up the hill each time rather than traverse out and catch a chairlift just to avoid the crowds. We farmed the crap out of light, stable snow and were not at all upset about it.

Sunday, December 22, 2019 – Mazama Ridge, Tahoma
The following weekend, with the avy forecast “considerable”, Jordan, Imran and I went exploring along Mazama Ridge in Mt. Rainier National Park. We were the first in the parking lot, enjoying a leisurely skin out to a rib, which we climbed on skis until we found trees coated in frozen rain. So close, we booted to the top and searched for a long time for a reasonable way down. We found… something, then made our way to the more standard Mazama skiing area. We were once again rewarded with light, stable snow. After a few laps the humidity and temps increased, and, newly formed crust be damned, we made it down safely (no one even fell in a creek bed!).

Tuesday, December 24, 2019
I grew up skiing on for the holidays, and while this isn’t exactly the same as family time, it’s always fun to get out in the mountains with friends. Our buddy Ben was visiting, so we met Nikki en route and took a trip to Crystal where we ran into all of the people for a fun day of group skiing. A hike to the top of the broken Chair 6 rewarded us with incredible views and at least 14 unbelievable turns. Again, lots of light, fluffy, stable pow!

Saturday-Monday, December 28-30, 2019 | Alpine Lakes High Camp
Many months ago our buddies invited us to join them in a cabin at Alpine Lakes High Camp for the New Year. Having spent too many of the last NYE’s drinking then regretting my choices the next day, I thought this would be an awesome escape: cabin with no electricity or running water + skiing + friends = happy Kristina. Which was true, save for the whole “there’s not much snow” thing.

We made the most of it. Cooking group meals, stoking the fire with ALL of the wood (especially when we put the toddler in charge), playing cards, and trying to find anything remotely resembling skiing. Seriously. The first day J and I were out for 3 hours and skied 636 vertical feet. I know, you’re jealous.

The inversion meant we had sunshine though, and at least there was a road we could skin up for a little exercise. On day 2, J and I went out with Morgan to explore above the clouds, then on the last day Shelia and I did a ladies tour and managed to explore over 7 miles. There wasn’t much snow, but we skied it ALL!

Fittingly, on the last day of the year it rained many inches, ruining what snow we had. On January 1, as we were loading up to head out, it started to snow. A fitting end for our trip, but perhaps a good omen for the new year to come?

Happy New Year!