Feburary 4, 2004, Snoqualmie Pass
2/4/04
WA Snoqualmie Pass
3360
3
I never thought Snoqualmie Pass could be so good. We caught the Central express at 9 am sharp and proceeded to the nordic trails and the overlook by way of Grand Junction. Skied execellent snow on the slopes beteween the overlook and Nordic Pass. Took a short side trip the the warming hut by way of a brushy excursion along the top of the ridge. At the hut we got a quick fire going to dry out, rest and eat. Headed back by way of a high traverse and did a couple more runs before heading back to central. Passed a very crowded lift line at around 5:30 pm and laughed to ourselves that these poor fools had missed the good snow in the resort of earlier in the day. The snow pack was about 1.5 ft of fairly new on top of very hard rain crust. Seems to be some bonding to this crust. A bit of soft slab formation in top inch or so but other than that the new is still fairly loose and was only capable of a bit of sluffing. Snow quality was better later in the day as it snowed continuously after noon.
We went out near that area for the first time on Monday. Had a lot of fun, even though we missed our intended destination of Mt. Catherine. We skinned up Hyak, down the backside to the bridge. Then up into the old growth, but ended up going way too far west and came out at the base of Windy Pass. Since we had never been there we skinned out into the open to get a cloud limited view back at Catherine. Didn't see the hut, but since you mentioned it I was able to find it on the map. Nordic Pass and the old growth areas are very cool. But it would have been nice to be on lighter gear for that excursion.
Oh no, now the Nordic Pass area is getting crowded - skiers on two weekdays! md2020, I have done that trip a number of times, and though most of the runs are short, the forest draped in winter is so beautiful that it doesn't matter. A good extension is into Silver Peak bowl or up to Silver Peak itself. Definitely a place where lighter equipment works well, and a lot of the time wide waxless skis work great due to all of the low angle XC skiing terrain.
For skiing the top 1K of Catherine, good downhill gear is well worth it, though it's indeed a minor slog getting it out to the base of the run...
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