April 2-9, 2004, Phantom (Snoqualmie Mtn.)

Early morning run up the phantom to test the early bird gets the corn theory. Started from the car at about 6:15, by which time it was already quite light out. Waterfall bypass was manageable but not completely straightforward. I booted up to here and then switched to skinning at waterfall top after I punched thru into a treehole. But skinning wasn't that fun either - hard boilerplate icecrust, or hard abrasive hoar, where each kick turn took dainty balance. Crampons might have been nice even, for either feet or skis. At 8:15 I had reached the level of the shoulder over into the north bowl. The snow previous had been frozen hard but it was beautifully smooth, promising goodness when it softened. But below the various cliffs above the Phantom and at all of the level above that shoulder, nearly everything had sloughed or pinwheeled or outright slid and hardened into a jumbled mess. I had hoped to make the top originally, and I still had time to wait before the snow was adequately soft, so I started up this nasty debris. Ugh. Partially because it's steeper, making the kickturns here was even more nerve wracking, and the debris probably would have been unskiable even if it were softer. Then, my shovel wormed its way out of my pack and fell, miraculously sticking in, rather than skating rapidly out of sight on 40 degree boilerplate like it should have. This told me two things: 1) snow was getting just slightly softer now and 2) fate was telling me that I had used up many of my Fortuity Units in one shot there, and maybe this was a good turn around time. With shovel now conveniently accessible I dug a launch platform and turned em around. Very thin ribbons of snow could be found that were free of debris, but still it was mostly jumpturning on very hard crust and in debris avoidance mode. I got below the debris level and had some breakfast while waiting for more softening. The run down from here was very fine, very fast. I managed to get down the waterfall bypass w/o removing skis but I wouldn't call all of it skiing. Back to car at 9:30.
Saw some folks across the valley making an early morning hike past Thumbtack on Chair. Hmm. Wide open no trees there and the slope had been in the sun since dawn and they were still going up. Hmm. On the other hand most of it had already slid at least once.
BTW, as viewed from shoulder the exits to the three N side chutes all showed that debris had come down them, with the fan at the base of Crooked being the most significant (had some dirt in it too), the other two being fairly minor but perhaps indicative that the inside of the chutes might be debris littered too. The entrance into /exit out of N bowl had fair size cornice in middle but could be skirted either side. I was possibly thinking of dropping in there to kill time rather than going up the debris on W side, but as viewed from above it sure looked steep, and would have of course been frozen hard. Not necessarily inviting as the first turns of the trip.