Mt.Baker skiing worth it ?

B1kessk1s

B1kessk1s

Member
planning a trip to seattle and wanted to know where is the best place to ski ( mostly powder). heard mount baker was THE place to ride. Is it possible to ride in the North Cascades national park or Olympic park ??? also heard of crystal mountain near mount rainier.

need help to plan a ski trip !

thank you !

Seb
 
It only rains in Washington. Also occasionally baker erupts and melts away all the snow. You are probably best off going to Snoqualmie pass because it has the highest base elevation.
 
Alpy is dope. only 45 minutes away from downtown seattle and has super sick BC. You should check it out!
 
Scouting for some options for where to move out west. will add this to the list of considerations. I'm from the east so I'm used to only rain haha
 
Somewhere however in the hills of washington is one of the most holy location where Jah himself touched Tanner Hall's ankles and said "you shall rise again on the sixth month" and hid an old piano out in the woods for the true fallowers of selassie to find and rejoice in the fact that they were the best damn skiers on the mountain.
 
Baker is incredible. Bluebird conditions 310 days a year, and Swiss precision champagne powder that is so light it never gets tracked out. And I'll be damned if it doesn't have terrain that rivals Chamonix and a park that is often confused with Breck. The locals are pretty weird though.
 
Also unlike baker, Snoqualmie has a good park so if the conditions aren't the greatest, there is still a good park
 
Baker is epic, but don't bother going if you plan to arrive after 10am, everything will be tracked. The level of riding there particularly snowboarding is incredible. The locals are really chill, one of the best on mountain vibes anywhere and the terrain is epic because the wet coastal snow clings to everything. Pillows, pillows and pillows. Get involved with the burgers at the lodge... worth a visit purely for these.
 
i lost it at this.

honestly not even worth the drive from seattle. you would have to leave before 5am to even have a chance at inbounds pow. bakers not the holy grail of skiing. inboumds at baker is decent for the first 2 runs then you have to go into the bc. bc is really where the area gets its reputation. but without knowledge of the area i would never venture past the elbow and that gets tracked by lunch. so id say stick to crystal/stevens/alpy, less of a drive, just as much pow and the locals are less likely to castrate you if you snake their line.
 
thank you everyone ! im from the east (montreal,quebe) so no powder here hahaha. im a very good skier all around but never did powder so i'll probably stick inbound and maybe a bit of backcountry but with someone who will know the terrain. for backcountry i guess its recommended to have a beacon or something like this ? do i have to take avalanche lesson or something like this ?
 
From this respone I would not go backcountry. You need beacon probe shovel a partner and knowledge of how to use te equipment and he terrain. So baker is probably not the place or you..
 
exactly! i dont want to die. just riding some fresh powder and having fun. im getting older (25) and a bit tire of snowparks. maybe for my first trip riding inbound and gettings some basics of how to ride powder would be the best for me ???? if so , what mountain do you guys suggest in Washington state?
 
Well Seb, If you need a probe/shovel/beacon let me know, I have a set and ski bromont too.

As for the ski resort, I can't help you, but I know that baker snow is on the heavier side and the terrain look sick, but I won't go there for the first time out west but that's just me.
 
If you're skiing mostly inbounds, then I definitely recommend Crystal. Alpental is great and Iove it-its where I ski 75% of the time- but its not very big and gets tracked out real fast in bounds. Also, if you want to ski pow, come end of February/beginning of March, we always get massive dumps around then
 
this. baker is too small, crystal is shit, stevens is basically all rain. best bet is snoqualmie or hurricane ridge, but realistically just go to whistler or bachelor
 
well I live in seattle and it hardly ever rains on the mountain. Pretty much if it's raining in the city, it's snowing in the mountain. If you want pow, crystal. It is endless to explore, and hit up the BC. I usually ski Alpental because it's close by, but Crystal is better if your planning the full day.
 
You must be a n00b. If not, I don't know where you're skiing, but all it ever does in the Cascades is rain.
 
these threads pop up every yr and honestly I dont know why?

If you're coming this far you might as well just go to Whistler or just take a slight detour to Montana. It's true that Baker (and the PNW) gets dumped on, but you only get it good for like 1 week and it gets tracked out by like 930am. After that one week it usually rains on and off, so you have to time it just right which makes it hard to plan a trip. You have a better chance of lining up a good trip somewhere else.
 
I love skiing Alpental and Crystal, but I don't know if I'd travel across the country just to ski here.Also, it doesn't actually rain that much here, but the past couple of years we have had a little bit of a drought in Jan-early Feb
 
Bakers snow is usually the consistency of your mothers soup.

Mission Ridge is THE place to ride in Washington, totally underrated.
 
I went to WA in March to ski real snow and all it did was rain the entire time. Snow was better on the east coast.

So I threw away my skis and did a lot of drugs.
 
baker sucks. i mean no high speed lifts, no gondolas, no tourist shopping or lodging on the mountain, a lot of times it snows so hard i can't even see where im going. the snow is often to deep, they don't groom any black diamonds so on a powder day you have to ski powder. i would recommend no one ever making the long trip to baker not even once.
 
We have a drought every year. It has to stop raining at some point for a little while at least. Just means it's time to bust out the mogul skis for icy laps in the mornings until the rain returns.
 
I went to Stevens and it was smaller than my home mountain in PA. It was absolute shit. I hate WA it should die.
 
Go to Crystal, South Backcountry is great, and it extends out so far you can get patrolled areas with fresh tracks even after a couple days of no snow. There is just so much terrain there to choose from its sick. Only downside is no park tho :(
 
They all warned me 2 years ago when I said I was going out west. I should have listened. Rain Rain Rain. And the Baker folk are to hopped up on acid and shrooms anyways. They also fornicate with trees.
 
If you want to ski some deep inbounds pow, crystal is the best place for that. It is a huge area so you can guarentee you'll find good snow throughout the day. Baker is a very small ski area so everything pretty much gets tracked out early on.
 
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