Colchuck Peak; May 10, 2008

Panorama from Colchuck lake. Aasgard pass : Dragontail Peak (8840') : Colchuck glacier : Colchuck Peak (8705'). (Editor's note: wow, colchuck looks dwarfed compared to dragontail at this angle.)
Lucas and I had some celebrating to do. After long weeks for both of us, we had a few highlights. I finished teaching my first class (Admittedly it was team taught with my boss but she gave me flexibility in organization and doing most of the teaching; we'll have to wait to see what the students thought) and Lucas had his last few lab meeting before he moves on to bigger (and better?) things. For weather concerns, we picked something pretty far east and agreed on Colchuck Peak. It's a pretty massive mountain and I've always been intrigued by Mark's "3000' glissade" stories. What better than doing the 3000' on skis. The plan was to make camp Fri afternoon, ski Saturday (Colchuck and others things?), maybe get a run in on Sunday, Ski out to the car Sun late morning, weather permitting of course. After my last class on Friday AM, I came home and packed everything into the car. After his lab meeting Lucas packed his crap as fast as possible and we were on our way, although not as early as ideal. Leaving the car at about 7:00 we had to boot up the road (no access because of snow) about 1 mile to the TH and then another mile or two because the snow was only patchy. We finally started skinning and made decent time until it got dark and we lost the skin tracks we were following. We mustered on and soon (i.e. 10:30) were at Colchuck lake for camp.

It was one before we got to sleep so we had a casual morning and headed up the Colchuck glacier. Clouds came and went, but by the time we made it atop the glacier, we were greeted with biting winds and it soon became socked in. We booted to the summit (left photo) and then returned to our skis. We got to ski 2500' from there - strait back to camp on soft and heavy snow, which made for good skiing (Lucas eating it up on the right). With the weather deteriorating, we aborted the plan for additional runs and an extra night at camp. We had a couple celebratory PBRs for the summit, our time out, and our nice run, and then headed out.

The ski/boot out was the worst part. All gear was soaked (i.e. lots of extra weight) and we had full packs. Trying to navigate through the terrain was a lesson in survival skiing. I finally gave up about .75 miles from the TH and put the skis on my back.

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.

2008 BC Ski Synopsis

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.

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 around 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!

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.

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.

McClellan Butte

So Lucas and I decided a short, fun outing was best because of his need to defend .... well.... next Thursday! Well, we decided on skiing McClellan Butte. 5:00 came and I was rip roaring ... we needed an early start to get back for "work." So we parked just off the interstate and headed out. We had a "description" of what we wanted to do but the gist was: 1) drive I90. 2) get off at McClennan Butte exit. 3) Park at trail head. 4) climb with the NW shoulder as your destination. 5) ski down. 6) drink beer back close to Seattle. Well, I made (6) up, but it seemed fitting. At the trailhead, disoriented, we met some guys that pointed us in the right direction and in turn we gave them some tracks to get through the mid part of the mountain (they were post holing with boots the whole way)

So we headed up, me skinning on the skis (pic left) and lucas on snowshoes packing in his snowboard (bindings still in the shop; pic right). I didn't envy him. Per our descriptive guide, we accidentally started climbing a little too early. To our defense we wanted to try to hit the summit, whereas the NW route cliffs out 300 feet below the summit. mushy, wet condition turned into some newly felled powder on top of a crusty base. This soon turned into 6 inches and then 18 inches of powder! We got about 800 feet from the summit and things got pretty steep and sketchy for me and my skins. We tried to stay in the glades and boot it but with no pro and turnaround time coming we decided to dig a platform in the steep slope for a late lunch and turnaround (Pic from platform on left). While we wanted the summit, it was just time to hit the slopes that we had climbed. There was no sense tempting fate with the powder that lay below us.

After lunch Lucas started down on his snowboard ... it sounded like he was relieved to have it of his back. The first few pitches were tough, being steep and "warm ups" for both of us. but below them was pure powder. We had about 1500 feet of knee (+) deep powder to ski before hitting the wet slush through which we would have to navigate. All the way down both lucas and I were giddy giddy giddy. Even though we were cursing the hike up and what lay in front of us (in terms of the crap out), we both agreed that the fresh, untouched powder was worth it and so much more. Cursing the wet snow and wet snow bombs, we eventually made it back to the car exhausted... but loving every second of it. We twisted each other's arms to end up at Rogue Issaquah. We had a beer and were so hungary added some appetizers. 2 beers later we were cruising back to seattle .... lucas to work (L, how much did you accomplish?) and me to grab my stuff for a top division soccer game. It's a good thing I saved all that energy, yeah....

Thinking back on it, that was the best snow of the year, maybe ever. It was only one trip down but it was worth the energy. On the way back I almost drove off I90 looking at our lines ... and scheming on all the other possible lines out there.........