The Snow Troopers

Brian Wilson snowskating the dirty snow of Paradise.

This past 8/28/17, I made the trek up Mt. Rainier to the Paradise Glacier. This was one of those, “keep the year round ski streak alive”, except this time I was linking up the year-round skiing with two Alpentalics that only Snowskate. I was thinking that this might be the first snowskating took place on the Paradise, but it was brought to my attention. That another local ripper, Andrea, did it years ago while working for one of the guiding companies. Below is a short edit of our day on Rainier.

Beautiful views from the Great Escape lift.

Did a couple short road trips over to beautiful Sandpoint, ID this past month of July, 2017. The goal was to run into friends and family, oh yeah, and ride the super long singletrack, Schweitzer has to offer!!! The day lift pass is only 35 bucks, which provides a high speed quad up to the summit (with a brand new lodge, called the “Sky House”, which offers an excellent menu & drinks). The views are awesome and the trails are super fun! If you time it right, there is also a shuttle service provided a handful of times on Saturday abd Sunday. The shuttle van departs from the bus barn (below the switchbacks) and just past turn two (on the switchbacks). I sure love my year-round skiing, but mountain biking on a ski area, then washing the dust off in a river for the Apres MTB, is mighty fine too! 🙂

Apres MTB on Pend Oreille River. Rider/Ben Pratt.

Halfway down Rosie Boa with Fletcher and Felix.

As some of you may have known, we’ve been out on MTBs lately, searching for nice rides with a high fun factor. So far, for this new biker, I’ve found that Leavenworth has amazingly smooth, long, and banked singletrack. The trails are being maintained/built by the Evergreen MTB Alliance. This projects spearhead is, James Munley, a long time loc who takes massive pride in building these trails that feel like riding a roller coaster!

The end of a wonderful day on the Flett.

July 8th, 2017, a small group of us gathered on the Flett Glacier in Adam Roberts’ memory. The day was long and extra special because we spent with Judy and Steve Roberts (Adam’s folks). We climbed up to the top of the Flett Headwall and Steve released some of Adam’s ashes into the strong wind that carried down on the glacier far below. We had a beautiful day and plan on making it an annual gathering. 🙂

 
Below is an edit Jeff Rich put together that captured a lot of our LOOONG day…
 

Shaun Maurer,
Son, brother, friend, leader and Alpental ski legend. Shaun lived more in 33 years than most live in a lifetime.

I can’t believe we’ve recently lost another good friend and amazing Snow Trooper. Shaun Maurer passed this past July 1st, 2017. His death took all of us by surprise, and yesterday about 30 of his dear friends and family, gathered at Jay & Laine/Ryan Kelly’s compound to celebrate Shaun’s life.
 
Karter Riach and myself started gathering footage from our archives, along with footage from Jerad Merbs, Mark Erickson and Jay Kelly, to put an edit together for yesterday’s gathering in Issaquah, WA. Please take 10 minutes of your day to honor Shaun and watch some of the great times we all were blessed to share from time to time. He was larger than life!
 

We all knew Shaun as an amazing skiing athlete, but he excelled in everything he set within his sights, from football, running, biking, school, business and being a very caring friend to his inner circle. As I’d mentioned, Shaun is the 3rd Snow Trooper taken from us in the past six months and the words below that Jerad Merbs posted on my personal fb page, said it well, along with bringing me to tears.
 

“Everyone knows Maurer was the King of Alpy! Leader of the pack for sure and so fun to ski with. He’s the only one that ever complimented me for my ability and actually wanted to ski with me. That meant so much to me coming from him, he made me better. So graceful in so many ways except when addressing pushy ski patrol. I’ll never forget it. Love you bro, we’ll catch up on that ski planet I dream of. With the rest of you bad asses already there.. It’s as if God is gathering his warriors, and Shaun is a General.” – Jerad Merbs (7/8/17)
 

Tim Souquet, in radio contact with Jeff Rich, prior to Carl Simpson dropping the summit.

Last weekend, a nice sized group met out in the Teanaway Valley for an early Cascade corn harvest. After putting their eyes on Mt. Stuart during Saturday’s ski day, Jeff Rich, Carl Simpson and Tim Souquet all decided to go for Ulrichs Couloir. I was quite impressed, first with the backcountry party/light show that kept these three up to midnight+, then the fact they managed to summit and ski before 1PM (starting apx a mile before the TH).
 

Below are a few words from Jeff in regards to the super long, sweet ski…
 

Skied off of the summit at 1:00. There was a little concern of some hidden slab potential, as there were a few natural releases that had occurred on the summit face, most likely the day prior. Booting up to the summit, pole probes indicated that the snow was good to go, on the skier left of the face.
Fast running sluff, but easy to manage.
 

There is a pretty good runnel at the dogleg, but can easily be navigated around. We skied down to the waterfall terminus, for desperately needed water, and boot packed back up a few hundred VF to the skiers right exit. where a fun, short gully drops you out on to the fan.
Was able to ski all the way to Ingalls Creek.
Snow was pretty much good top to bottom.
Go get it!
 

This past Saturday (5/13/17), Woods, Michelle and Andrew spent a BIG day up on Goat mountain, located in the North Cascades, off of HWY 542. If you’ve ever skied the Mt. Baker ski area on a clear day, you most likely have seen Goat Mountain, amongst the many peaks to the North.

Jeff Rich dropping the steeps of Mt. Pilchuck, a “Lost Ski Area” of WA State.

Jeff Rich and Carl Simpson recently returned from a road trip, where every main course featured CORN! Looking forward for the edits to come, but in the mean time, here’s a fresh one from a trip Jeff took up to Mt. Pilchuck this past Wednesday (5/10/17).Thinking the random snowboarder he captured rocking the steeps, was Greg Phillips. 🙂

Andrew Eckels in the slot for lap #1.

Hot lap with John Adams, who is the co-owner of the Glacier Ski Shop, located in Glacier, WA. If you’ve ever made the journey to the one of a kind, Mt. Baker ski area, you would have passed through Glacier, which is the Gateway to the ski area.
 

I met John years ago during a trip to ski on the actual Volcano (circa 2004- Feb), Mt. Baker, and my bro Dale had been shooting the breeze with John (in his ski shop) as I made my way North from Snoqualmie Pass. Dale Boehm, who’d grown up exploring the BC in that area for years, let me know John had a lot of knowledge, as they compared notes of past trips. Well, a bunch of years later Adam Roberts (RIP) came into my life. As Adam and I shared many adventures in the short time he showed me how to live, he often spoke of John Adams, helping him (Adam) as an athlete and always speaking of his incredible skill climbing and descending BIG mountains. I happen to know this first hand, because the trip years ago in Feb, I captured John climbing and skiing Grouse Ridge (outside Glacier, WA) like a BEAST! The dude is really a monster, but a kind one as you’ll find out when you stop into the “Glaicer Ski Shop”. 🙂 As you can see, he happens to like groomers too!

Andrew Eckels in the slot for lap #1.

On Friday April 21st Andrew Eckels, Stefan Knorr, and Rob Bolton met at Snoqualmie Pass for a tour we all had fairly low expectations for. We’re in the thick of the transition period between winter and spring and the snowpack has been pretty isothermal. Telemetry indicated there might be some good snow in high north facing chutes so we ventured up towards the Slot to see what we might find.

Topping out at 8:30 AM we were delighted to discover the slot was filled with 8 inches of untracked stable powder!! The snow was creamy and skied bottomless and smooth! After digging around and ski cutting the slope we dropped in and were blown away that we were skiing steep powder in late April at Snoqualmie Pass!

Stefan sniffin’ out the good on Snoqualmie Mtn.

Initially we had only planned to go for one run but our lap was so good and it was still so early we decided to head back up and check out the Snot, a couloir to the lookers right of the slot. We got on top of it and found many cornices baking in the sun and overhanging the run so we decided to bail and go for another lap on the Slot instead. Our second lap skied just as well as our first and we hooted and hollered the whole way down. The exit ski back to the car was a slow sticky leg burner but we were too stoked on our day of epic steep skiing to care much. We capped off the day with beers at the Dru Bru with TNT!

Check the video for great stoke on April pow skiing! There may still be some more days like this before May!