A short synopsis of the skiing in the past 3 months. I've skied a total of two day in this millennium before this year and it shows. But it's an awesome time out in the back country.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
White Salmon Glacier (4/26/08; ski)
Ian had the weekend off to go celebrate his birthday and wanted to do something "big." We decided to attempt Shuksan via the White Salmon glacier. Late Friday afternoon Lucas and I loaded up the car and headed to Ian's. We made our introductions (I hadn't met Ian), loaded the car and were on our way. We arrived at the Mt Baker parking lot after they had closed the gate so we were resigned to the upper lot and it was there that we set up camp .... in the lot. After a 10 course meal, some beers, a birthday shot of whiskey, and a b-day piece of cake, we headed off for some shut eye. We woke up to the sounds of the cats taking off onto the ski hill and then dinked aro
und packing up camp, giving way to a late start.We took off from the upper lot, why we didn't just drive to the lower lot and park outside the gate, I don't know. Headed over to the white salmon glacier with a view of the objective in front of us. We started climbing (red) up the white salmon. We actually followed some skin tracks up a knoll to gain the white salmon a bit higher. In hind sight we should have gotten on the glacier below, more or less the same was we actually came down (green). After a rest on top of the knoll, we continuesd up and were almost immediately hit by the sun (there wasn't a cloud in the sky!). With conditions changing and a turnaround deadline looming, we made it up to the top of a little feature, had some lunch and started the descent before the sun baked the snow some more.
The skiing on the first part was just pure heaven. The snow was
wind loaded 'powder,' up to a few feet deep. The pic (right) shows a group of 5 just to the right of our lunch spot with our tracks in the powder descending to the left. Just pure enjoyment. At the bottom of the glacier, the snow turned into avy debis that was covered by easily broken crusty crap. After struggling through this terrain we ended on the bottom of nice sun-softened snow, great spring skiing.Even with the short-ish day it was beautiful terrain and skiing. I hadn't expected to summit with the unknown conditions, route, and our timing, but it was my 4th time on the mountain, all of which ended with a 'premature' turnaround. Hopefully in the next few weeks (or months?) I'll have a post with a picture taken from the summit! ... but what a beautiful day and incredible skiing!
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Wright Mountain (4/5/08)
Finally got back into the snow on the 5th. Lucas and I were going to do a longer overnighter .... something like an overnighter on Shuksan, but instead we hung out late Friday drinking beer and discussing life issues. After long weeks for both of us we decided to sleep in and go from there. So I woke up late, cooked a decent breakfast, and had a lazy morning. Finally we decided to go for a close overnighter and after packing and getting organized we were at the alpental parking lot at the bright and early time of 1:00 pm. We planned to go to someplace around snow lake for our little overnight excursion.
took the normal route - climb up to ridge, ski down to snow lake. Very nice! It had recently snowed and there was 4 inches of powder. We crossed snow lake and climbed to gem lake and decided to camp there. We climbed to a knoll to make sure we were out of any avy danger (it was supposed to snow some more). Of course this was annoying because the few times we left we skied down 50 feet on our skins and when we returned to camp we had to redon the skins and climb about 50 feet. We decided it was a fine trade off to make sure we wouldn't be buried by snow in the middle of the night.
Since neither one of
us have built a snow cave we decided that it would be advantageous to try to make one, for future reference if we ever get into dire straights. 3 hours later, we were soaked and exhausted, but had a roomie cave with a slanted floor and a door that was a little too high. We called it good, and set out to get one short run in since we really hadn't done any skiing. We climbed to another knoll, that we named 7 o'clock knoll (it was 7:00 when we started climbing with light fading fast; chair peak pictured from the knoll in the fading light). Spectacular powder and a great run. Back at camp we had some dinner, whiskey, and called it a night... a very cold night since the cave was a tad spacious and the door let in a lot of cold air.
The next day we climbed Wright mountain. Pictured below is lucas arriving at the summit with the cave on the knoll just out of the picture to the right. We skied down into the drainage NW towards wildcat lake. With the extra 3-6 inches of snow while we slept, it was again superb. It was a great run (pretty long for the area) we had lunch on a nice opening, after which started up back to the ridge where we had lunch on our previous excursion out to this area. We climbed 7:00 knoll again because it was so much fun the previous evening and was right on our way back to camp. By this time there was a lot of accumulation and we were causing a lot of slabs to slide which sketched us out a tad. We packed up camp and cautiously descended to snow lake and then out to alpental. All in all, a successful outing with a few great runs, a first attempt at a snow cave, and a relaxed schedule.
took the normal route - climb up to ridge, ski down to snow lake. Very nice! It had recently snowed and there was 4 inches of powder. We crossed snow lake and climbed to gem lake and decided to camp there. We climbed to a knoll to make sure we were out of any avy danger (it was supposed to snow some more). Of course this was annoying because the few times we left we skied down 50 feet on our skins and when we returned to camp we had to redon the skins and climb about 50 feet. We decided it was a fine trade off to make sure we wouldn't be buried by snow in the middle of the night.
Since neither one of
us have built a snow cave we decided that it would be advantageous to try to make one, for future reference if we ever get into dire straights. 3 hours later, we were soaked and exhausted, but had a roomie cave with a slanted floor and a door that was a little too high. We called it good, and set out to get one short run in since we really hadn't done any skiing. We climbed to another knoll, that we named 7 o'clock knoll (it was 7:00 when we started climbing with light fading fast; chair peak pictured from the knoll in the fading light). Spectacular powder and a great run. Back at camp we had some dinner, whiskey, and called it a night... a very cold night since the cave was a tad spacious and the door let in a lot of cold air.The next day we climbed Wright mountain. Pictured below is lucas arriving at the summit with the cave on the knoll just out of the picture to the right. We skied down into the drainage NW towards wildcat lake. With the extra 3-6 inches of snow while we slept, it was again superb. It was a great run (pretty long for the area) we had lunch on a nice opening, after which started up back to the ridge where we had lunch on our previous excursion out to this area. We climbed 7:00 knoll again because it was so much fun the previous evening and was right on our way back to camp. By this time there was a lot of accumulation and we were causing a lot of slabs to slide which sketched us out a tad. We packed up camp and cautiously descended to snow lake and then out to alpental. All in all, a successful outing with a few great runs, a first attempt at a snow cave, and a relaxed schedule.
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