WWW.SKIMOUNTAINEER.COM
Dedicated to Ski Mountaineering, Backcountry Skiing, Alpine Touring, Randonnee, Telemark, and Snowboarding since 1997
"The combination of skiing and mountaineering is the finest of all sports."
- Sir Arnold Lunn (1888-1974)
Website News:
March 2009
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La Niña is back! The 2007-2008 season brought the strongest La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean during this decade, which
produced the greatest snowfall at many locations in the OR and WA Cascades since the record 1998-99 season, topped by 947"
at Paradise on Mount Rainier. The current 2008-2009 season began with ENSO neutral conditions, and the early winter was the
most spastic in recent memory, with a large number of cycles of abonormal cold and lowland snowfall interspersed with some
heavy rain and extended periods of sunny high pressure. However, there is strong hope for a colder-and-wetter than normal
late-winter and spring, as Pacific Ocean temps have now shifted back towards moderate La Niña conditions. A major storm
cycle in mid-March has brought the snowpack to above-normal throughout most of the Oregon and southern WA Cascades,
although depths still remain below-normal in northern WA and southwestern BC. A pair of major storm cycles in mid-February
and early March also boosted the snowpack from far below-normal to slightly above-normal in the northern CA Cascades.
I have finally resumed updating this website after a lengthy hiatus of over a year. Hopefully I can continue making
regular updates.
Work on my Skiing the Cascade Volcanoes guidebook had also been halted since July 2005,
but some progress has now resumed.
Through January 2009, I have skied or climbed over 200 routes on all 28 of the Cascade volcanoes included in the guidebook.
I would like to ski some more routes on the less-known volcanoes in southwestern BC, where information is quite limited, but
otherwise the research for the book is largely completed. Finishing the 330+ page, full-color, fully-typeset book is the major
remaining task, followed by getting it printed and sending it out the door. Publication sometime during 2009 appears possible.
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