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April 17-18, Eagle Pt Revisited

4/15/09
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Posted by Gary_H on 4/22/09 2:01pm
After our scouting trip the previous Saturday and Telemack's excellent report, we decided to return to Eagle Pt to ski it's inviting slopes. So Friday evening Jan and I along with her brother Jeff and Chmnboy skinned out to the Waterhole Hut to spend the night. The small A-frame is easily accommodated the 4 of us.

We woke up to clear skies and 25 degree temps. It's about a mile and a half and 1200 vf to the summit of Eagle Pt from the hut. Shortly after reaching the summit, a friend from Sequim who was out for a day of ski touring joined us. The views of the Olympics, the San Juans, Mt Baker and Glacier Peak were amazing.

We checked out the NE aspect that Telemack and Animal had skied the previous Saturday. Given his description of conditions and evidence of several large wet slides from the previous few days, we decided to turn our attention to the NW facing slopes.

We dropped down the ridge to a short, steep NW facing bowl. Dropping into this we found a couple inches of soft wind blown on top of a very edgeable  surface. We continued down the ridge a short ways until we found a continuous 35 degree slope that dropped about a 1000 vf down into the valley. It started as an open face that transitioned into a glades of mixed aged firs. The snow was excellent all the way to where we were finally cliffed  out.

Rather than climb our ski route back to the ridge, we elected to make an ascending traverse to the west, hoping to regain the ridge at a much lower elevation and closer to Waterhole. This turned out to be a good decision. With the exception of a short boot pack to climb around a gully, we skinned at a comfortable angle and regained the ridge at about elev. 5,500 ft at the top of another bowl that we couldn't pass up skiing. This run dropped us about 700 vf down through an open glade of small firs. Everyone had big  ;D at the bottom!

We skinned back to the ridge, dropped over the other side and came out on the road about a quarter mile uphill from Waterhole. After a quick ski back to the hut we packed up our gear and were on our way back to Hurricane Ridge, tired but very happy. Thanks Mack and Animal for your beta.

Here's a link to a few pictures (I hope!)

http://picasaweb.google.com/GaryJanH/20090418WaterholeEaglePt#

Gary and Jan
Good trip guys and gal.
It looks like there are several good skiing options from Waterhole.  Glad to hear that you are getting at it.  Do you suppose that the South aspects along Obstruction and Elk will hold snow for long?

Thanks for the pics.  If you want to post some on your TR you'll need to upload them to somewhere other than picasa (I use flickr for no reason).

It has been almost 20 years since I last used the Waterhole Hut. At that time, you had to enter a lottery to get a chance to book it. Anyone know when it lost it's woodstove? It was a nice warm place to bring youngsters for a weekend of back country skiing. With the equipment of the day we couldn't take advantage of the terrain shown in the pictures like we can now. :'(

author=Snow Bell link=topic=13110.msg54647#msg54647 date=1240512052]
Good trip guys and gal.
It looks like there are several good skiing options from Waterhole.  Glad to hear that you are getting at it.  Do you suppose that the South aspects along Obstruction and Elk will hold snow for long?

Thanks for the pics.  If you want to post some on your TR you'll need to upload them to somewhere other than picasa (I use flickr for no reason).


Thanks for the photo suggestions, I am a novice at the web hosting thing. Weather conditions permitting, we are headed to Steeple Rock in the morning to ski one or more of the north facing aspects we looked at a couple weeks ago. I will send you an update on snow conditions in general.

There looked to be some good routes on N Steeple.

It doesn't look like I will be making it up your way before the bridge shuts down for repairs.  I suppose I'll just have to drive around and stay a week.  Maybe I can chase Jan up to High Divide.  ;)

Thanks in advance for the conditions update.

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april-17-18-eagle-pt-revisited
Gary_H
2009-04-22 21:01:04