February 17-18, 2010, Colchuck

Around 10:30 Wednesday morning Mike and I started skinning a few feet from Icicle Creek Road. In spite of low coverage on either side the road was well covered with snow/ice making for a pleasant skin all the way to the trailhead. Skin track/boot pack is well established most of the way although the track we were following ended abruptly after a short downhill a little ways below the lake. We went forward setting a somewhat squirrely track through the thick woods dodging rock outcrops and reached the lake without issue. Coming out of the woods onto Colchuck Lake on a bluebird winter day is€¦inspiring. We could see two little specks moving up the glacier and soon passed their bivy site on the lakeshore. It was great having a nice skin track set up the moraine where we made camp. With dusk approaching the two skiers set nice lines down the glacier and stopped for a chat at our bivy site.
We slept in and enjoyed a hot breakfast while watching two climbers boot towards the north east couloir. This was feeling like a luxury cruse compared with our one day attempt at Colchuck two years ago. Skinning up the glacier was fine but as a boot track was established we switched to that and made decent time to the pass. I was curious about the coulior on Dragontail but getting there would involve loosing some altitude to avoid a steep rock garden between our location and the base of the coulior. We were also unsure about the snow quality on that aspect as it was getting some sun and the upper Colchuck Glacier was somewhat wind affected. So we stowed our skis and poles and headed for the summit of colchuck with ice axes in hand and boot crampons on our packs. The snow was soft enough that we never used the crampons. There were a three or four spots where the steep climb/traverse passed under rock outcrops. Here there was only a few inches of snow making the steps tenuous and the ice axe useless. I was not looking forward to downclimbing these sections. Even though the exposure was not terrifying, a fall here would be dire as it is probably too steep to arrest and there are plenty of cheese grater rocks & small cliffs below. We both had huge smiles as we walked across the summit plateau where the views were breathtaking in all directions. A short ramp up the rime encrusted summit block put us on top. On the way down we managed to avoid the worst of the sketchy sections and back at the col were fired up to get the skis on. The glacier held wind crust with pockets of soft and it was a blast to ski among the massive cliffs.
Back at camp we hurriedly packed and the only thing to report here is that the valve on my neo-air (the very same pad that I had been bragging about how light, compact, warm, comfortable, bla-bla-bla€¦) was hopelessly stuck. I thought I had opened it prior to leaving thinking that I would return to a deflated pad. Thinking it was frozen I tried breathing on it for a while with no luck. Finally I gave up and punctured the damn thing with my whippet figuring I could patch it later. The only saving grace being that I got the pad used for forty bucks as opposed to the usual ridiculous price. The ski down the moraine to the lake was awesome and would have been worth a lap or two or three time and energy permitting. (We had neither) The ski out was about what you would expect with nasty mank above the log bridge and frozen cauliflower ice below. Finally it was so nice to leave the skis on and glide the road back to the car, beers and a giant burrito at €œSouth€ in Leavenworth.
I took a ton of pictures and will post a link to more soon.