With warm temperatures and sun predicted for Saturday, Colin and I decided a trip up to Camp Muir was in order. We left Seattle around 7:45am and got increasingly excited as we drove through the park, culminating in playing the Top Gun Anthem as we geared up in the nearly full Paradise parking lot in sun hoodies. We started skinning at 10:20am behind quite the conga line of people—good to see so many out enjoying the park on a beautiful day.
Since the road had been gated all week, the whole area looked pristine, without s-turns and tracks everywhere. We pushed the pace a bit at the beginning, passing a lot of folks, and eventually settling into a nice rhythm above Panorama Point, slowly passing the rest before arriving at Camp Muir alone and with nearly first tracks about 2.5 hours after we’d started up—a pretty awesome experience. After a brief snack, we clicked into our skis and headed for the top of the chute. I’d skied it twice before in varying conditions and wasn’t sure what to expect. What we found was hero heavy corn. We whooped and exclaimed “I can’t believe it’s this good” a series of times as we stopped to let our legs recover.
It was lovely top to bottom but clear things were warming fast and wouldn’t last for more exploration, so we skinned up to Glacier Vista before skiing out. I was expecting the snow to be really heavy and difficult from that point to the car, but it ended up that we were able to glide on the top layer of heavy corn most of the way before just needing to sit in the back seat and take long, slow turns just above Paradise.
What a phenomenal day and what felt like a gateway to spring!