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Published: March 7th 2008
With our time running out here in BC, we have been doing some extra ordinary skiing. This past Sunday we headed off to Mount Baker, in the US. An early start to the day , 6am, and we were crossing the border, getting visas before 7:30am. There were no cues, and most importantly the US immigration officers were incredibly bright and cheerful.
Passing through the border town at the so called 'truck crossing' was uneventful and the drive up to the mountain long and tedious.
However, the melancholic vibe soon lightened up once we got our skis on and started skiing in the fresh powder.
Mount Baker gets a lot of snow, and perhaps what makes it not quite 'world class' is because its small, and the chairlifts are slow. In 1999 the ski resort recorded the world record snowfall of 2896cm. We were suprised to hear one skier commenting that the snow was crap. For us, even after skiing BC's best - Whistler- it was awesome.
Even though the summit is quite high (2800 mtrs), and can be seen from Vancouver on a clear day, the vertical drop is not that steep. This, coupled with 20cm
of fresh snow, was confidence inspiring for my level.
There are lots of short lifts, which wisk you off your feet quite abruptly to various parts of the mountain. Mostly intermediate and expert trails and lots of off piste opportunities. We were making our own tracks that day, at times in knee deep powder.
There werent even many crowds, and virtually no line ups at the bottom. The friendly community feel gave it a bit more warmth than other larger ski resorts.
On the way back through Bellingham - a city filled with shopping malls and fast food outlets - we had some bad luck. Firstly we never got to do our shopping at the Costco (it closes at 6pm), never made it to the duty free shop (for cheap US wine), got caught in a 45 minute wait at the border crossing and had our car over heat. Nevertheless, it was all worth it , and again another memorable and much talked about day of skiing.
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