A great May Day to close out a superb year at the home mountain filled w/ sun, huge snowpack and good friends(and my dad). I was stoked for the clear skies so our friend Nate Powell could catch some epic views having seen only cloudy skies since his arrival from Whitefish, MT this past Fri.

Alpental is really closed for the season now w/ no Cinco de Mayo lift served action this Thurs. However, I think a party in lot 4 will still happen this Thursday along w/ a little bootpack/ skinnin’ action.

This just in from WSDOT (in an earlier email, they mentioned that if all goes well, they hope to open the N. Cascades Hwy by Memorial Day weekend):  It’s Dustin, from the west side, bringing you an update on our snow-clearing progress. .. I’m sure this comes as no surprise to any of you, but we’re still getting snow. Yup, it’s almost May and we’re still doing avalanche control in the passes. Fun times. I just got off the phone with Dean Hills, maintenance superintendent out of Wenatchee. … Hills said that we’ve nearly finished cutting through the Cutthroat Ridge avalanche chutes. We’re through CR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. The two full-size snowblowers have a little work remaining at CR 10 before they’re through, and we have about an hour’s worth of pushing with the D8 cats at CR 11 and CR 12. Once the cats have finished pushing and cut the slides down to manageable sizes, the excavator and snowblowers can punch through pretty quickly. Then it’s on to what we call the Annex – the area where avalanches from Liberty Bell reach the highway a second time. Hills believes we should reach the Annex quickly next week. We’re finding a lot of debris in the avalanches so far. While it’s not too much of a problem for the cats and excavator, it is a problem for our snowblowers. The debris breaks a lot of sheer pins on the blades of the snowblowers. Each time we break a sheer pin, we have to stop and replace it, slowing us down. For a better idea of what a sheer pin is, check out this picture first, and then look at this close-up. A bigger bucket for the excavator is supposed to arrive on Monday. We’re bringing it in from Euphrata – it’s normally used for ditching. Supposedly, it’s twice the size of the normal bucket. That’ll help move more snow more quickly. As for the west side, Gary Claybo and Gary Ward tell me that we’re all the way to milepost 152. We stopped using the loader-mounted blower Wednesday because the snow was getting too deep – more than 5 feet deep. We brought in a full-size snowblower from Stevens Pass on Wednesday and put it to work. Gary Claybo says the full-size blower should speed snow removal up a bit. However, Gary Ward thinks we’ll get slowed down once we reach milepost 155 because there’s a fairly large slide there. …We got a few new pictures from the west side this week. Have a great weekend.

Fresh snow at Hyak, WA April 28th, 2011 was just what I needed to get away from the computer and get out for a couple laps with Trooper dog, having missed out on Crystal’s shin deep lift served (which Sting said was good but heavy). Ran into JD Smith and Greg Louie on the face getting a little late season gwanch too!

The Snow Troopers headed up to the Mighty Mt. Baker ski area April 21st and 22 for a little touring on Thursday and lift serve on Friday (last Fri of season).

Leaving the Heather Meadows parking lot heading out towards Table Moutain we spotted the Patrol getting ready for Friday’s opening working the rope lines above the Elbow. As they descended they were ski cutting the 1/2 a foot or so on the steeps getting very little result. Looked good, but it was warming so a couple short laps in the Blueberry Chutes zone was the objective.

Day two started w/ snow falling in Glacier, WA, a nice morning walk w/ trooper and off to the lift served late season powder playground. Not many people on the mountain as they loaded the first chair just “Moments” after 9AM. We were hoping to see Zack Giffin, Squatch, and the gang which we did, but not how we expected. Sting noticed some tracks coming down the towards the wicked chutes under the Hanging Glacier and I then noticed the first snow rider was slashing his way as we watched. Epic! Ran into Zack later that day and he told me his brother did get footage of the descent. I also caught a short shaky clip which is not in this vid, but will share soon. We did a few laps in bounds then it was off to the Shuksan Arm which is truly amazing eye candy along w/ beautiful skiing. Before the day ended I ran into Christian and we were off for a trip down Hemispheres to hit the Elf Chutes.

Below are a few pics followed by a not too short vid of the two days. Snowpack looks great for our late season BIG lines.

Mt. Shuksan as seen from Mt. Baker’s White Salmon Lodge

Boot packin’ the Shuksan Arm

North Cascade GOODNESS!!!

UPDATE 4/26…WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM WED. MORNING THROUGH LATE WED. NIGHT…ANOTHER STRONG AND COLD PACIFIC STORM IS EXPECTED TO BRING SIGNIFICANT SNOWFALL TO THE MOUNTAINS. SNOW LEVELS WILL PLUMMET TO NEAR 500′ LATE WED. NIGHT OR EARLY THURS. MORNING…* AFFECTED AREAS: OLYMPICS, CASCADES, MOUNTS RAINIER AND BAKER. A STORM TOTAL OF 9 TO 15″ OF NEW SNOW IS POSSIBLE BY EARLY THURS. MORNING…WITH THE HEAVIEST AMOUNTS FALLING ON THE SOUTHWEST FACING SLOPES. LESSER SNOW AMOUNTS ARE ANTICIPATED AT THE STEVENS AND SNOQUALMIE PASS LEVELS. Note that there’s a high avalanche danger warning in effect as well. Live to ski another day!

Here is the Whitefish Mountain Resort video from earlier this month w/ a little peek at The Lodge at Whitefish Lake located just minutes off the mountain. The Lodge at Whitefish Lake has top notch rooms, service, and some of the best food around. Having timed this trip at the last week of ski operations and long before Glacier NP opens for the Summer (which brings the town back to full swing) a super low price was scored. If you want to get away for a late April or May “ski tour” vacation that won’t break the bank, I would highly recommend basing out of The Lodge at Whitefish Lake.

To take a look at the original post along w/ some pics click HERE

Our friend Bob w/ Peak Video/ Freeride Promotions sent this one over of them catching a great Spring powder day at White Pass, WA. This mountain is know for great snow pack, epic views and most of all the Mahres, so it’s only proper that Bob put it all together in this video(maybe w/ out the epic views on this day).

Headed up to Highway 2 to Stevens Pass yesterday to get in some spring skiing on 4″ new – started out nice but winter returned early afternoon with heavy snow which ended up adding another 6″ today to their snow base of 185″ at the top and 141″ down low. Here’re 2 views from the top of the Double Diamond chair looking across Mill Valley into the backcountry.

With so much snow, it’s too bad they shut down after this weekend. Try to make it out on Sunday for their last day and Springfest — schedule below.

Well, I was going to do a re-edit of this video for TST, but I haven’t gotten to it and this one is just so damn hilarious that I’m gonna post it instead. Some of the footy here goes back to the post I made about Gallagher/Hawkins death perch Poppoff and I made earlier in the year. You can see the climb from the helmet cam on the sled in this vid. Pretty intense. Props to MP for the fun edit! Makes me laugh every time!

need we say more?