April 30, 2009, Washington Pass, Birthday Tour

First time trip on the famed Sally Portman Birthday Tour, Greg and I car bivvied while Jason bravely drove up from Seattle in the morning.  Started just before 8 at blue lake trailhead--we had been told to avoid icy conditions starting too early. Since it was sloughing on all aspects by noon, we probably could have started earlier, but the skin up was pretty darned good. Crisp, cool air with an inch of fresh snow  (please forgive my limited vocabulary, unlike the inuits and veteran tayers i have a lot fewer words for the white oobleck)-hey! that's not bad!- maybe i'll learn.
I was surprised to  see a wide swath opening up to blue lake col about 5 minutes into the trip. I had climbed up a couple of times to Liberty Bell and SEWS last summer, and there were a lot more trees. Must have been a massive slide as evidenced by the broken trees.  Must have been early in the season since the path was quite smooth. Made for easy travel over a couple of gentle benches to the base of the col. 3 fast skiiers passed us booting up the col--surprising since greg is incredibly fast--but he was kicking in a good track. BTW, strangers, thanks very much for asking us before taking the first tracks on Madison Ave--very polite and much appreciated. Doesn't much matter to me sinceI ski a wide dollar sign on the lines of others, but I know that some people appreciate getting in the first track. Almost fell in my own slough, but had lots of fun on that run. Soft snow, (umm, creamed corn? manky fashizzle? whatev?) Anyway it was fun. At 5900 feet, we tracked below the fantails of some fresh runouts into the valley to the east looking for THE route to the other side of paradise. Hard to pick which way to go, 360 degrees around us there were glistening pure white slopes begging to be skiied.  We picked the point due east and skinned up to a saddle at 7400 feet. Jason set an excellent track on a pretty steep slope which was sliding in places and regularly sending pinwheels down at a pretty good clip. It was still warm and sunny, although clouds were moving in. At the top, we found a small cornice on the east side, and headed down. We had to navigate north to get into the correct drainage toward the hairpin, but it was all down hill. Skiing the trees was fun, but there were goodly sloughs on all aspects and it definitely caught my attention in the steeper spots. Quite a large avy runout just before the hairpin by spire chute, but the base seemed relatively solid and the runout seemed like a top layer of soft recent snow. Back at the truck a little after one, this trip ran about 5 and 1/2 hours. I'm a  fairly pokey climber , so it would be pretty reasonable to have taken an extra lap somewhere. Still the clouds were pretty gray by the time we got back and we were done. Good trip--but watch your speed in Newhalem. "Didn't I see the sign? Hell, Deputy, I didn't even see the town! Looking back, I probably could have come up with something better...

More pics on Picasa:

http://picasaweb.google.com/dangreenfield3/2009_04_29BirthdayTour?authkey=Gv1sRgCNrGyfbs7tq2Xg&feat=directlink

And some videos too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgmv0QBBO5g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgmv0QBBO5g