February 10, 2004, Mt Catherine, Snoqualmie Pass

Joshbu and I went up from the Hyak parking lot to the summit of Mt Catherine this morning. The surface of the snow was pretty nice looking surface hoar (lots of it), from the ground to trees, up to when we entered the forest. In the forest, the snow was really stable, even on pitches that we measured to be around 50 degrees. I got a real workout breaking trail on those (even on 45 degrees stuff), and switching back is a bit scary sometimes. But it was my first real skin and I'll get better at it. We ended up on such a steep slope going up because we missed the NW-facing shoulder by a bit, since it was very fogged up and we went West too much to clear the cliffs on the shoulder's climber's left.

The snow going down was very nice, creamy and smooth. We had a great run. Got a bit too far East and had to find a line through the cliff, which fortunately we found without having to drop anything (we'd have hiked back up).

A great trip! It took us 5 1/2 hours from car to car.

drC

[Edit: Changed title to indicate Snoqualmie Pass.]