Best backcountry mountain

summit east

west

central, if you go inside the house box, you go into the 6th demension!>!>!> but seriously alpental.

Crystal hands down

crystal

I think it's a matter of opinion as to which kind of backcountry you're looking for. Crystal will have the lightest snow, the biggest open faces and good stuff to jump off, Alpental has the burliest stuff, baker has tons of stuff to skin/shorthike/snomo to, the greater snoqualmie area has tons of cool skinning if you know where you're going, and hyak probably has the most extreme nordic shit you can find. not really, but hey.

you can ski the back of mission ridge all the way to ellensburg. but probably alpental.

^maybe, but youd better bring some skins or something to cover the last 25 miles across the valley to get to actual Ellensburg. Your hill goes flat a ways before you get to town.

word to skins

BBBBBBBBBBAKER

alpental ftw

ive only skied stevens bc so im going with that

summit county, everyone go there.

but otherwise go to crystal, great backcountry, and the patrol is allways needing something to do.

don't go to alpental the patrol there allready has enough on there hands with out you killing yourself.

ALPY FTW!!

Crystal has best inbounds by far

^I was about to make a smartass comment about inbounds counting as backcountry, but I must admit I was at crystal once last year and the new chair (former backcountry) was still pretty sketch as far as inbounds goes, I was rather grateful to have all my shit on me really.

i never got a chance to get up to crystal last year when they had the new lift, but i think ill have to make it up there this season sounds like that opend up some good area.

and by "opened" you mean "raped".

forgot to add "pillaged"

^ haha, really

Crystal has some dope BC shit. This season ill be living up there, if anyone want to hit some booters up ther pm me, ill take the shovel! It would be cool to make an NS BC ski session.

if you know where your going theres some real good stuff at Stevens

same with baker too, with sleds you can drive up logging roads that access mountains that almost never see people in the winter

Cle Elum and Roslyn have some great pillow lines near the logging roads too.

But as far as lift boot hike or skin from a lift to O/B its gotta be Crystal

the new lift in North Back is a fucking joke.  It sucks.

see ingrid's "review" of it in powder/freeskier/whatever?

nah. what did she say?  That it is the most awful shit ever.  I hate it.

I LOVE, FUCKING LOVED Northback.  I hate that lift.

according to ingrid the only complaints are from "the hairy woodsy types" while everyone else "liked how it removed the pressure from other lifts and zones, and it made for shorter lines and fewer hikers elsewhere".

new powder mag with pollard on the cover.

see...the access back there was so easy already it didn't need it.  I liked that it was one spot that you could always find powder really easily, and hell, Brand-X does not that that long at all to get out too.

Ingrid disagrees with you. I don't know her, and I don't know you, but I'm pretty sure she is better then you, so maybe tell us why you think it sucks. I seem to think that maybe it is you that sucks my friend.

South Back, Av Basin is dope at Crystal too.

I like the lift, totally frees up the other side of the mountain which is higher, and makes North Back accessable without hitch hiking or having to place a car at the bottom. Its like having a 2 person, ultra slow heli at the bottom waiting. And when it starts to get tracked, head way south.

I laughed.  I like how people take one thing you say and just make the situation black and white. 

Ingrid opinion isn't the end all of opinions, but if you wanna suck her dick, by all means do.

Regardless of Ingrid's skiing and mine, the reason I dislike the lift is that it took terrain that was easy to access with a little work and put gapers all over it.  Even if you went as far into North Back as possible, out to Brand-X, it was a short hike/skate.  Hardly any work at all.  But just the fact that people had to take their skis off was enough to keep the masses out.  And on days when everyone on the mountain was waiting in line on 6 and hiking into south back you could get tons of vert and often times deeper snow in North back.  And if you knew where you were going, the quality of the runs, while maybe not as good as a waist deep run from the top of the King, was still very damn good.

Putting the lift in there took all this easily accessible hike terrain and opened it up to people who were not willing to hike even 5 minutes for it before.  A lot of the good sections of terrain are now shorter seeing as much of the lower sections now just end up in shitty bump fields leading to the lifts.  It also makes access to some of the best lines of the mountain much more accessible to people who would have never found them.

In regards to spreading out the people on the mountain better, yeah, that is somewhat legitimate, but was it really needed at crystal?  I didn't think so.  And while they spread the crowds out a bit on the whole mountain, it takes the one spots that is quickly accessible for great terrain and protected snow (which excludes going far out in south back, even if you are in stellar shape) and made it accesible to people who if the lift had not been put in would have never skied there.   I never experienced that bad of crowds.  Even on the worst days the line at the bottom, on Rex, Green Valley, or chair six was never more than 20 minutes, and often times like 5 minutes or less.  Coming from colorado where 30-40 minutes lift lines happen weekly and having been in a 2 hour + long lift line before, 5-10 mintues is nothing.  The mountain did fine with the lift system it had.  And while the hordes were all skiing chair 6 and south back, north back remained untouched because people had to hike up a hill and skate 5-10 minutes out at the bottom.

So maybe I do suck, but you don't seem to be really saying shit here.  At least I have an opinion of my own instead of just going with what someone else who I have never met says.

And for the record, most people I knew in the Seattle-Tacoma area were not stoked on the lift.  And that includes lots of TGR guys, UPS kids, and most of the Puyallup sturtevants guys.  Some people liked it, but most of the people who did were the ones always bitching about the "strenuous" skate out on Ho Chi Man or waiting for the shuttle.  The majority liked the situation more before the lift was installed.

You gotta remember, too, Ingrid skis for Crystal Mountain.  Of course she is going to support their decision.  I am sure they took some heat from people up there and knowing the crystal management, who more than one person here can vouch for as utter douchebags, I wouldn't put it past them to ask her to go out and try to shred some positive light on the situation.

hahaha oh wow you fools actually believe ingrids review. that was the most bullshit review i have ever seen, she was just writing that for crystals sake because she is a crystal mountain rider!
putting in that lift was the worst idea crystal has ever had, it has destroyed so much backcountry that once was almost untouched. and now it is filled with gapers. people who cant ski, are out there. i swear some gaper is gonna die sometime out there.
but aside from that if you want some true backcountry go to baker, or aplental. if you want easy acsess backcountry that has lightsnow go to crystal.
baker is the was to go if you want burley-ness!