The Brothers - 2/15/09

I've never been to the area, but I've wanted to try my luck at the brothers for awhile. You can see them standing by themselves from Seattle, and they mock me every time I drive West on a surface street in Seattle. From my understanding, late season climbs of the brothers can be a bugger due to overgrown brush. So, with the nice weather I went over the past weekend with my skis (being optimistic) to try to get some turns in and make things (possibly) easier.

Road to Lena lakes was snow covered, and impassible for my tiny golf 1 mile from TH. Thanks to Mike and jared from Port orchard for the ride to the TH. 'Great,' I thought, 'sufficient snow!' 100 feet into the trail skis went on my back, and unfortunately they never left that perch. Trail was crystal clear to Lena Lakes. From Lena Lakes, trail is snow covered, but easily navigable (no skis). Camped at the fork in the stream (3000').

Sunday, we had to boot through avy/fire debris until about 4500'. We wasted much energy navigating the downed trees, especially with the sticks on my back in AT boots. There wasn't enough snow cover to just walk/skin through, as I was hoping. We finally hit continuous snow at ~4500' but I still booted to a headwall at ~5000'. We decided to turn around there because of our late start, weather coming in (started to snow), and fatigue from jumping around trees. I probably could have gotten a 750' run with my skis, but I didn't want to mess with the skins, etc.

Got back to TH at dark, and I finally got to put on the skis for the first time just to tour back to the car through the slush.

I am sure there was some skiing to be had up top, but the ~8+ miles each way in AT boots wasn't worth it for me. At least I got to bring some of the Olympic National park back with me - attached to the skis! Hopefully I'll be back to finish them off shortly .... but this time a little more prepared.