Weekend of snow and exhaustion

So Saturday was a friend's b-day. The plan was to go to Hyak and have a decent nordic ski. We headed up with a late start and got some exercise in. It was a pretty chill day with beatiful skies. after some skiing around, we headed out to the yurt and arrived at about 3 in the afternoon. Soon people just started showing up with things big foot had stashed away for us. Part of the group and the "stash" pictured. Weather was warm, baking the snow and as we headed back it was already getting severely crusted over. It was a great day and a low key x-country ski - hopefully the birthday boy thought so too! I think that I totally suck at x-country skiing because I was exhausted on the ride back to Seattle in the evening, even moreso than climbing with a pack on. Back in Seattle the group met at a local brewpub and then Leny's, a local dive, to celebrate in another style.

So after 3 hours of sleep owing to daylight savings time, I was getting ready for a short bc excursion with Lucas. We were on our way early enough and were going skinning away from the alpental lot (actually me skinning and L taking his snowboard for a walk). We just decided to climb up the ridge to snow lake and go from there - needed to be a short day. It was great weather, but the snow left something to be desired. Hard crust early on. On the way to snow basin I got a quick shot of Chair peak and you can see the NE buttress route - 'hourglass' of snow heading straight up to the summit and the SE gully, the skinny snow filled gully just to the left of the large summit block, both of which we did last winter. After hitting the ridge, we headed into the snow lake basin and skied across the lake. On the left you can see L pushing taking his little pet for a walk across Snow lake. We then decided to climb the ridge on the other side because it looked "easy enough" and fun to ski. It was. We climbed up to the ridge and had a nice lunch on the ridgeline (Lucas pictured) and just skied back to lake (down to the right from pic). If we had to do it again we would have climbed closer to the peak behind L. It looked like a better climb and even better descent. Regardless, this was the best snow we found since I imagine it was protected from the sun and wasn't pure crust or pure sludge. afterwards we just retraced our steps and by the time we were skiing to source lake the sun had cooked the snow so we were skiing through the typical NW concrete. Back to the car by 1:45, early enough to dehydrate some more at rogue and then play soccer. With a lack of "drama" the past few times out, hopefully we've graduated so I can bring you some bigger and better TRs.... per my altimeter 2900' gain, 2850' loss, a good half day.