May 16, 2009, Mt. Hardy

Mt. Hardy- south face, southwest ridge, and lower southwest chutes:

The pre-dawn start (4 am) from a car bivy site along Hwy 20 and headlamp route finding was fortunately worth the effort of skinning/lugging skis up to the top of Mt. Hardy.  Enjoyable turns were had with Kevin and Gabriel in the mid-morning sun before the surface crust became too soft.     

Bushwhacking factor was far less than anticipated (thanks to old avalanche debris still covering much of the vegetation below Mt. Hardy€™s prominent SW chutes).  Some rotten snow (deep mush) and exhausting post-holing was encountered on a short (but seemingly long) section of the ascent to the SW ridge, but the surface crust became thicker (about 4-to-5") and far more supportable above about 5,600 feet. 

Shallow snowpack layering in the early morning on the SW ridge and south face above about 6,000 feet was a fairly sturdy surface crust underlain by a few inches of poorly consolidated granular snow or powder, with another melt/freeze crust beneath underlain by semi-consolidated granular snow.   

Booted/cramponed up the final about 160 vertical feet to the summit on semi-breakable surface crust.  Unimpressive skiing in the southwest-facing chute off the summit (jump turns and side slipping on the steepish semi-breakable crust).  Once back at the false summit, the south aspect was ripe for harvesting.  A couple of quick slope tests were done (pushing a heavy mass of snow onto the slope followed by a couple ski cuts) neither of which produced any sluffing.

Fun turns were had on the south face shortly after 10 am on €œsemi-corn€ over a still supportable crust.  A few small pinwheels further down, but no significant sluffing. 

We turned off the SW ridge below 6,400 feet onto a northwest aspect skiing excellent corn on an old forest burn slope down to the gut of the main SW chute.  Good corn turns down to about 5,100-feet, where old avy debris had choked the chute from an adjacent gully.  While probably not €œgood skiing" by most practical definitions, the debris provided mostly continuous skiing below adjacent slopes which were mostly melted out.  Amusing €œturns€ were had by all attempting to ski through the snowy rubble (the surface had fortunately softened).  After a short portage to by-pass a melted-out section of the chute, the skiing was continuous back to the car (with the typical North Cascade stump/log dodging in the lower forest).  Back at the car before 11:30.