January 2, 2004, cave ridge steeps
1/2/04
3192
6
Skot and I skinned up with canine jane through champagne pow on a cakey crust, the stuff that our dreams are made of, up the west-facing slopes of guy peak/ cave ridge, as an alternative to crashing the SAR party that was happening in the ALP BC today. It was sunny, and the skinning went quickly as we ascended 800 feet up beneath or inbetween these 2 chutes, kevorkian and what I'lll call "crescent" for now...
we made it back alive, 8) with huge smiles paralized on our faces.
BTW they found our lost skier (way out there) after 4 freezing nights, so don't say its impossible!!
we made it back alive, 8) with huge smiles paralized on our faces.
BTW they found our lost skier (way out there) after 4 freezing nights, so don't say its impossible!!
Were those yer tracks coming down the Phantom Waterfall??? Very nice to whoever it was. Wish I could have been there..
~Greg "the only splitboarder on the Alpie Volly patrol" D.
~Greg "the only splitboarder on the Alpie Volly patrol" D.
Mtn Frk - thanks! not sure if it was ours, but we skied the Waterfall on 1-1-04 (happy new year indeed, more like happy new skid mark)
Where did they find the guy? We bumped into the search team ourselves early saturday morning. and watched/heard the helicopter all fri-sat-sunday. It was like skiing in Utah (shameless dig).
Where did they find the guy? We bumped into the search team ourselves early saturday morning. and watched/heard the helicopter all fri-sat-sunday. It was like skiing in Utah (shameless dig).
My current understanding is that the guy climbed up from piss pass towards pinapple but instead of curving around towards great scott bowl he skied down into the Denny creek valley (rather than back into the Alpental valley)via a run known as "fucked bowl". This run offers great skiing but is called that because there is no way to return to Alpental except of course by climbing/skinning back up. My understanding is that he then climbed over Low mountain to the next valley where he was found near Tuscohatchie Lake. If anyone has more/better information please feel free to correct me.
For those not familiar with Alpental or run names in the Alp BC click here: http://www.avsp.org/BC_Map.html . To ski pinapple/great scott bowl one would go down a little bit on the back side of that map and curve it over to get back into the Alpental valley as can be seen on the map. Fucked bowl would be skiing it more or less down the backside of the map instead of curving back around.
The guy may have made a few mistakes such as not climbing back up into the Alpental valley, but there is no doubt that he is one hell of a survivor. I'm sure he had plenty of opportunities to give up but to his credit he kept on pushing.
For those not familiar with Alpental or run names in the Alp BC click here: http://www.avsp.org/BC_Map.html . To ski pinapple/great scott bowl one would go down a little bit on the back side of that map and curve it over to get back into the Alpental valley as can be seen on the map. Fucked bowl would be skiing it more or less down the backside of the map instead of curving back around.
The guy may have made a few mistakes such as not climbing back up into the Alpental valley, but there is no doubt that he is one hell of a survivor. I'm sure he had plenty of opportunities to give up but to his credit he kept on pushing.
Three of us skied the lower avy slopes of Cave Ridge/Snoqualmie yesterday, about a mile up the valley trail... (we saw several tracks coming down the phantom waterfall). The snow was phenomenal until early afternoon. After the first run, greg announced "that was the best ski run of my life". But sometime between noon and 1pm, the snow went from deep champagne powder to glop. On our skin up, we noticed the snowpack had settled about 3 inches outside of our skin track from an hour before.
The top several inches were still dry and fluffy, but the foot of snow below that was now very wet... I've never seen the snow go from amazing to crap so quickly - and usually it gets wet on top and stays dry underneath, this time it was the opposite! In fact, it was almost unskiable, because the wet snow made the fluffy stuff cake up on our ski bases.
We were at around 4000ft - the telemetry for 3800ft shows temps never got above 7, but the sun sure had its way with the snow....
The top several inches were still dry and fluffy, but the foot of snow below that was now very wet... I've never seen the snow go from amazing to crap so quickly - and usually it gets wet on top and stays dry underneath, this time it was the opposite! In fact, it was almost unskiable, because the wet snow made the fluffy stuff cake up on our ski bases.
We were at around 4000ft - the telemetry for 3800ft shows temps never got above 7, but the sun sure had its way with the snow....
Alpentalcorey - good overview of the rescue but I do have one minor correction regarding run names. The bowl south of Pineapple is called "Fuck Bowl".
At the risk of not being PC, the origin of the name as told by an older fellow patroler goes like this - " I came over the ridge to ski Pineapple and two homos were fucking in that bowl on the other side of Pineapple..." and thus the name.
Also - earlier there had been some confusion about the name of the "Phantom" slide path. It got its name due to the fact that it struck in relative silence - it had snowed a bunch followed by very hard rain. The huge slide was a natural and came very close to destroying the maintenance shack. A number of cars were totaled. After the slide - patrolers went to the shack and alerted the crew in there that they had nearly been killed. The rain was so loud they hadn't even heard it...
Anyway - very glad (and surprised) that Dan was recovered alive.
At the risk of not being PC, the origin of the name as told by an older fellow patroler goes like this - " I came over the ridge to ski Pineapple and two homos were fucking in that bowl on the other side of Pineapple..." and thus the name.
Also - earlier there had been some confusion about the name of the "Phantom" slide path. It got its name due to the fact that it struck in relative silence - it had snowed a bunch followed by very hard rain. The huge slide was a natural and came very close to destroying the maintenance shack. A number of cars were totaled. After the slide - patrolers went to the shack and alerted the crew in there that they had nearly been killed. The rain was so loud they hadn't even heard it...
Anyway - very glad (and surprised) that Dan was recovered alive.
;D
Thanks for the info. I guess a lot of times these things are like that telephone game that we played as kids. I had heard a rumor of patrol stumbling upon a similar "situation" in shot 6. Maybe it's all just permutaions of the same story having changed by the time it reached my ears.
Thanks for the info. I guess a lot of times these things are like that telephone game that we played as kids. I had heard a rumor of patrol stumbling upon a similar "situation" in shot 6. Maybe it's all just permutaions of the same story having changed by the time it reached my ears.
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