[Just_Some_Hiker]

No pictures because today was the day that my SD card decided to bite the dust. 1,000+ pics, poof, gone. Remember kids, always backup. So, the "mostly sunny" forecast for today was mostly BS, at least as far as Rainier was concerned. When I arrived at Longmire it was snowing hard. The lady at the booth said that the gate was expected to open on time, but I was skeptical. After watching the plow guy and the ranger chit-chat for a while, they finally got around to opening the gate 30 minutes late. Sucky, but at least they opened it. When I got up to Paradise the mountain was mostly socked in. And it was also really cold out. 12 degrees according to my car. The good news, however, was that there was tons of fresh powder on the ground. As is often the case, I was the first person out of the car and thus had the honor of breaking trail. When I got to the top of Pan Point I let a couple other skiers break trail from there on. Despite all the fresh snow, the top of Pan Point was still a little firm and icy. After McClure Rock everything softened up again. As I continued towards Camp Muir, visibility kept going in and out. It wasn't bad enough to impede navigation, but enough to be concerned. Around 8,500 feet I finally breached the cloud layer. It was sunny and beautiful, but windy and cold. VERY cold. The snow higher-up was starting to become wind-affected, but was still very skiable. When I reached Camp Muir I did not linger. I put on a parka and hardshells, pulled skins, and shook my hands furiously to get some feeling back in them. Only about 5-6 other people made it to Muir. On the way down, once I passed the wind-affected areas, the skiing was excellent. Nice, smooth powder turns. Easily some of the best skiing I've ever had on Rainier. Unfortunately, when I skied back into the clouds it was a full-on whiteout and I had to slow down to almost a walking-pace. The whiteout persisted until I was all the way down. On my drive out, I noticed that the mountain had completely cleared up. Go figure.

[yukon222]

Several years ago, a friend’s SD card couldn’t be read due to errors. Data Rescue program from Prosoft recovered all of the pics from the card.

[nordique]

I've learned, the hard way, that I need to reformat my memory cards once a week. It's not enough to delete photos downloaded off the card.

[cascadeclimber]

[reststep]

That is a good tip I did not know about. Thanks

[Michael Lewis]

^also thanks for the re-formatting tip.

[John Morrow]

How do you reformat?

[christensent]