May 31, 2004, Sunrise-Burroughs Mountain, Rainier

After skiing a day in Glacier Basin and then one in Grand Park, Andy and I took a rest day in camp, mostly spent sitting under the blue tarp listening to the rain, eating, and sampling our extensive collection of fine beers, but with a nice forest hike thrown in, before concluding our wet vacation with a skibiking tour of Sunrise. The little bits of weather information we were able to get suggested that this day might be payback time for all of the previous wetness, so we got an early start and were soon biking up the gated Sunrise road under overcast skies (the Park now officially allows this as long as the plow crews haven't already gone up for the day and changed the sign on the gate). We found the Yakima Creek draw very well filled in and the snow mostly firm, so we just booted right up it for the first 1500vf, putting on the waxless skis when we got into the Sunrise meadows proper. Skiing across the meadows was fast as the ~2" of recent snow had frozen and there was just a dusting of overnight new. Given the warm spring, we were surprised at how much snowpack still remained on the meadows. The plow crews have only a few strips of snow left to clear from the Sunrise parking lot (keep that in mind over the next 4 weeks as the gate remains closed and much of that snow melts away).

Sucker holes kept appearing, in between snow showers, and we eagerly scanned the skies for signs of the clearing which we knew must be about to occur as we skied up to Frozen Lake saddle. We saw (imagined?) some encouraging signs, so we skied and then booted up onto 1st Burroughs Mountain (~7200'). Here there seemed to be 4-6" of recent snow, but it was well frozen with only a thin layer of overnight snow on top. The coverage on the top of 1st was very extensive (though probably not very deep), and we skied across nice fast snow to the 1st-2nd saddle, where the sun got warmer and suggested a lunch break. It was only 11:30, so we figured we had plenty of time to wait around for the clouds to lift some more and let us continue on to 3rd Burroughs Mountain. For a while it seemed that this might actually happen as various features appeared out of the fog, and we dozed off for a while in the warmth. It was not to be, however, as the clouds descended back onto the Burroughs Mountains and it got windy and started snowing. Still hoping for a miracle, at about 2:30 we traversed in complete whiteout across the east side of 2nd Burroughs Mountain until we finally gave up and followed our tracks back down to Frozen Lake saddle and on to the Sunrise meadows. The 1500vf ski back down the Yakima Creek draw was very fun - steep enough with the fast snow to get some speed thrills, with blind curves and various exciting obstacles like holes, waterfalls, and fallen trees. We saw fresh dog (coyote) tracks on 1st Burroughs, fresh bear tracks in the Yakima Creek draw, and a small bear on the Sunrise road as we coasted back to the car.

Photography conditions were not great on this trip, so I played around with the movie feature of my camera. Here are some short sequences from the return trip (3-4 MB each, no sound, .MOV format):