49 Degrees North – change is afoot in the Independent Republic

On the surface, not much has changed in the last 3 years in the Independent Republic of Chewelah (IRC), nestled at the foot of Chewelah Peak, home of 49 Degrees North in northeastern WA. In contrast, the ski hill has big development plans in the next 3 years – high speed lifts, on snow accommodation, and various other upgrades to add to the kick-ass terrain and tree skiing that its boundaries encompass.

We arrived to a 4-6 inch dump of El Nino powder. Its clam chowder texture (without clams) skied really nicely all weekend, especially in the treed, northwest facing areas. 49 gets so few people there was still some fresh lines Sunday afternoon if you poked around the glades off Chair 4. Over the weekend, the weather slowly cleared, leaving a bluebird cool day for us and seemingly about 50 other to shred superb groomers and trees on Superbowl Sunday. Always a great day to ski 🙂

Busy Saturday morning 🙂 this is where teh new base village will be built

Kathy and Jan on the clam chowder pow. It skied very fine indeed.

Kathy in Cy Glades

Fine terrain off Chair 4

The crew in the glades

View from Angel Peak towards Chewelah Peak. Cy Glades – great skiing – to right of peak

Saturday afternoon looking southwest

Jan ripping Sunday morning groomers – alone!!

East Side groomers

Sunday morning crowds

These changes on the hill are actually accompanied by new developments in the IRC. A buzzing little wine bar, Chew Vino, serves tasty food and good drinks. There’s a new restaurant that our buddies rated highly across from Sporties, the best bar in town. Not much has changed in there – luckily – it’s still a great bar full of super friendly and funny locals and a beer selection on tap to keep me very hoppy indeed.

It’ll be interesting to see what changes the ski hill developments bring to 49. It’s so close to Spokane, I suspect it has a chance of being quite a hit. In 5 years time we might even have to wait in line for 1 whole minute …

8200m, 9200m, 7100m vert

Season Totals 32 days, 255,000m vert, 17 powder days

PS Our Mission Ridge season passes give us 3 days freebies at 49 Degrees North. Quite a deal!!

 

Late January at Mission Ridge

El Nino? What El Nino? Mission has a 60+ inch base up high and 50+ at the base – as good as I’ve seen in quite a while. This is a great snow year (fingers crossed it’ll stay that way!). We skied the last two weekends in January at Mission Ridge, and the conditions were tasty indeed.

The first weekend was cold and clear with plenty of pow to mop up after a storm the night we arrived. We ripped the soft snow and soaked up the spectacular views. And thanked our lucky stars that we have season passes at a treasure like Mission Ridge, where crowds really don’t exist.

Pow on Bomber bowl

The peasants live below the inversion 😉

Wawa

late afternoon views

Top of Mission ridge

Kathy and Jan at top of Mission

Mission views – inversion in the Columbia valley

Mt Rainier from Mission

Bomber Bowl

One way to close a lift 😉

Mission Ridge

Wawa

El Nino did make a dramatic, brief appearance on the West Side of the Cascades after the weekend, which was as welcome as Donald Trump at an Hispanic  farming convention. Luckily the damage on the east side at Mission was minimal, and although the warm up left a firm base, the temps dropped and 5+ inches of blower pow fell, which hid a lot of lurking evil. The solid base seemed to scare most folks from venturing off groomed, which just left more for us. It was tough to take, and to be honest variable in places, but there was some very fine untracked turns to be had all weekend.

Sun 8300m, Mon 8200m, Sat 8800m, Sun  8400m vert

Season Totals 29 days, 230,500m vert, 16 powder days