April 3-5, 2004, Upper Nason Creek, Stevens Pass

My daughter and I have been doing an annual ski overnighter since she was five, and this being our sixth year we decided on two nights and a more challenging route. I re-glued some old Col-Tex skins (thanks Andy) to use on my daughter's skinny cross-country skis (the 50mm skins were a few mm wider than the skis) and this allowed her to climb more steeply than me (on wide fishscale skis without skins). We climbed about 900' through forest and made camp in a nice meadowed area at 4500' which I had noticed on previous trips. It was an incredibly beautiful day - warm sun, little breeze, the meadow alive with bird song. In the afternoon we set some tracks around the meadow and got our speed thrills zooming down little slopes around the meadow. Clouds came in near sunset, but it cleared again during the night and the snow in the open froze to a near-walkable crust. Sunday dawned cloudless, and we spent the morning skiing around the meadow. Snow in the sun quickly began to soften and made for great cross-country skiing, while shadier slopes remained firm and fast - great for speed thrills. In the afternoon we skied to Lake Valhalla. After warming all morning, the snow in the forest on the SE aspect we traversed was perfect, and I was a little disappointed that I wasn't there for turns. The last 200' of steeper climbing to reach Lake Valhalla, on S-facing slopes, had become 6-10" of large-grained mush.

Here's a photo from the top of the steeper section, with Lichtenberg Mountain in the background:


From the south end of the lake we skied across it to the north end and had lunch, then skied back again. We put the skins on my daughter's skis for the descent, and this worked pretty well as my daughter could just glide down my tracks if I kept the angle shallow. As we skied around our meadow after dinner, fog was forming on the small Crest peaks, and the next morning we awoke to find our meadow in fog. One of our kitchen benches turned out to be pretty well protected from the breeze (especially with some extra blocks of snow around it), and we spent the morning alternately eating and playing cribbage, and skiing around the meadow, where the surface snow had begun to soften despite the fog. After lunch came the biggest challenge of the trip - descending to Nason Creek. Having become wet, my daughter's skins no longer stuck well enough to stay on for descending, so we zorroed our way down through the forest, and it took us as long to get back to the car as it had to get up to the meadow on the first day.