The weird winter continues. Turbo dumpage in mid November, then nothing for a month. Some decent Xmas falls, and now it’s all heading north again into BC. The conditions in the Pacific Northwest are decent, and excellent in more northerly places, but a return of the La Nina-driven powder express would be welcome soon.
As a rule of thumb, Mission Ridge skis really well with 36 inches at the top, and 24 at Midway. This weekend, even with the snow base a few inches down on these figures, there was lots of variety or terrain to tear down. And of course a fair bit of shrubbery to dodge.
Saturday started slow due to the main Liberator chair being offline for de-icing. Once it opened after lunch, we were surprised by the quality of the snow, both on and off groomed. We had a fabulous afternoon, despite the weather forecast being as accurate as Harold Camping’s predictions. And a lot colder.
Sunday was wash, rinse, repeat, without broken lifts. As it warmed up during the morning, we ventured more and more off the beaten track, finding pockets of excellent snow and even some new steep lines between the cones of basalt that are Mission’s signature. All we need now, like the Republican primaries, is a game-changing event to make things really interesting.
I’ll keep watching the weather forecasts this week.
Saturday 720om, Sunday 8300m vert
Season Totals: 23 days, 178,000m vert, 9 powder days
Pacific Northwest Ski blog (and a few other places!) 
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