July 13 Coleman Pinnacle

Mike and I headed out to the Coleman Pinnacle Sunday on a spectacular day.  We parked at the Heather Meadows parking lot thought the road to the Artist Point lot is clear the lot itself is still being cleared.  A combination of booting the snow, walking the road, walking the stairs and skiing got us into the open slopes on the south side of Table Mountain.  We skinned from there to the saddle at 5100 and then booted up the northwest face of the bump on the south side of the saddle.  We took a run down to about 4800€™.  It was about 11:00am and the snow was still pretty firm.  The suncups weren€™t large, but they were pretty hard and it was a leg bouncer of a run.  We then donned skins for a rising traverse to Ptarmigan Ridge.  After following the ridge crest on skins for a while we dropped another little run.  The snow has softened well and it was a nice run on pretty smooth snow of very similar aspect to the face skied earlier.  We got the skins back out and pointed toward the Pinnacle.  Ski crampons helped as we traversed fairly steep and still pretty firm snow.  A short boot up snow between a couple of rock patches left us with a nearly straight shot to the East Ridge of the Pinnacle.  We climbed the ridge until the snow ran out and then ate lunch on the rocks.  We watched a small herd of mountain goats work their way up the south slopes of the ridge on which we sat.  We skied a 1000€™ run from that point.  This one was on buttery corn and very nice.  The suncups were really minimal and the faces we skied were not shot through with melt water grooves.  I was very happy with the snow quality.  At the bottom of that run we saw the only two other skiers we would see all day.  We made a gradually rising traverse back to the 5100€™ saddle.  We discovered why some people don€™t wax their skis as we were able to make the traverse without skins.  We continued on towards the Artist Point lot in the same manner, though it did require about 100 vertical of boot packing.  We dropped directly down towards Bagley Lake, but missed the chute with continuous snow and ended up 'schwacking some to regain the snow.  Right now the skiers left line from the parking lot is continuous, but it is only 6 or so feet wide and may not last much longer.  There are a number of continuous lines east of the lot.  We climbed towards the car, again sans skins.  The small melt water pool right at the parking lot caught my eye in the morning and with the last bit of work from the bottom of our last ski to the car warming me up I couldn€™t resist the chance to try my hand a pond skimming.  It turns out it is easier than I thought and more fun too.  Four runs latter we were heading for the car.  It was a very nice day.  The snow was great and still very plentiful.  Photos tomorrow.