Crystal Lake Basin Ski tour

Sunday was the day to go out. Not only was it supposed to have the best weather for the weekend there was an omen. On Saturday, I went to buy ski poles at a great local shop up the street, but it was closed. there was a sign (scribbles on paper is a better way to describe it) that said that they were closed due to "unavoidable circumstances." Below that it read: "You should be out skiing anyway." Together I understood that to mean, "go away stupid! Take advantage of the snow, we are!" Good advice. My 'bent in all direction poles' still remain basket-less. c'est la vie. So we were off to ski on Sunday. I just went along with whatever lucas wanted to do since I didn't think that I could convince him to seriously attempt Shuksan in these conditions. So off to Crystal we were.

4 am alarm (aka, cussing after a night of drinking). 5 am departure. 7 am skiing at the deserted Crystal ski area. It was warm and the snow already soft and wet. We skinned up and had a second breakfast on a table outside of the lodge on top of the mountain. We made an upward traverse of the headwall under the high campbell chair and gained the ridge. Past the throne (1) we ended up on top of Silver King (2), which would be our high point for the tour (Right, me pic'd on the throne with silver king in background). We rested with an early first lunch and prepped for our first decent. We headed away from the ski area down into the crystal lake basin. The snow was soft and wet, after all, it is the spring. The decent was great, with soft snow through some nice, open glades.

At the bottom of the descent (3) we had a brief second lunch and schemed our plan. Unfortunately, neither of us had been to the area. I wanted to get around to the opposite side of crystal peak to try to find better conditions. We found a ledge system to try to go around, and the ledge system quickly cliffed out. We retreated as fast as we could. Our second illadvised plan involved taking a crazy line to try to gain the next ridge en route to Crystal Peak and we eventually arrived at the ridge (red dot). There was definitely a better way (purple dot), but that would have involved backtracking! After getting on the ridge and being able to breathe again we made the easy ascent up to Crystal peak (4; site of panorama). The clouds were thinning and Rainier was coming out. The day was getting better.

From here, we followed the ridge to two peaks (5, unnamed?; 6, Chinook; both pic'd on right, above from our decent into the basin). We backtracked a tad on the ridge, continued, and met up with other skin tracks that made the much more logical line to the ridge. After an 'easy' boot up class three rock (not as easy in AT/ski boots) to the true summit of the unnamed peak, we just followed the ridgeline to chinook peak (Lucas pic'd in bad lighting with Rainier). Our route was 'doable', but traversing to the SE face around the rock outcropping would have allowed a straight shot up a snowfield. We rested atop chinook peak a long while since we were done climbing and the weather/scenery was spectacular. Both of us waterless, we melted some snow in the sunshine. We wanted ski the wall to crystal lake but couldn't find a way. So we we skied down NE to hit skin tracks on the backside of the ridge, which led us to sourdough pass (7) and back out to the ski area (8). A final decent down silver basin and we were back at the car. Per the broken altimeter: 5000' gain, unknown mileage. Great skiing, great day.