Home > Trip Reports > April 18, Mt Shuksan via White Salmon

April 18, Mt Shuksan via White Salmon

4/15/10
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
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Posted by Clarence on 4/21/10 2:57am
Travis (Gorp) and I left Seattle at 3am and cruised up to the Baker parking lot cursing ourselves for having to wake up so early.  We skinned along the road under Chair 8 at around 6:30am and skied into the valley in difficult mashed potato conditions and with a strong odor of gasoline around.  One of the creeks we crossed in the valley was filled with gas, possibly from the ski resort!
The valley was frozen and we made good time up to the White Salmon, where we switched to booting and traveled up a monstrous pile of frozen avy debris.  We made decent time booting up the White Salmon on climbers left all the way to the Upper Curtis where we broke into the sun and found a trace of new snow.  We switched back to skinning and a short wallow in deep snow on Hell's Highway led us to the Sulphide which was easy going. 
We chatted with a few skiers under the summit pyramid and booted up to the top.  We downclimbed about 30' from the summit to just below the rime mushroom, anchored in and stomped out a platform to put our skis on.  Conditions were good and the sluff was very manageable.  What a rush skiing the steep summit pyramid with such a breathtaking view and great weather!  There was good proto-corn turns down the Sulphide, Upper Curtis and Whinnie's Slide.  The skiing deteriorated the farther down the White Salmon we got, but it was still fun.
I won't say much about the slog back up to the parkinglot except that it was nothing more than torture.  Heinous, post-holing, tree-grabbing, dirt-crawling torture.
All in all, an excellent day with great weather.  Just under 14 hours car to car.
A few pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2081645&id=32402620&l=5f5a402c59
I hope you reported the leak--it could be ongoing!

Nice work guys!

And yeah, the gas smell needs to be reported. Baker ski area might want to know too - maybe they can figure out the source and limit the damage if its really their stuff.

Here's the WA DOE spills page. The local USFS ranger district might be helpful too since they may know the terrain and what facilities and operations are up there.

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/spills/other/reportaspill.htm




I just reported the incident as directed by that web site.  Thanks for the tip, I would not have known who to contact otherwise.

Glad to hear you guys got a good ski of most of the pyramid.  Had we been a little braver I think we would have gone for it.  Do you guys have pictures of the slide paths on the WS?  When we ran into you guys en route it sounded like there was plenty of hazard.

Here is a picture of the slide(s).  It's kind of a bad picture, but...
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/-W7MrQ9U3ym2o9Con2Bq7g?feat=directlink

We did ski back down the WS.  The skiers left half of the glacier that is a little lower angle and get's more sun had not slid.  It's rolling terrain was smooth and enjoyable.  We didn't notice any significant instability.

Here are my pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2075357&id=42900320&l=696c0c4cdf

fyi, though there were bare patches in the trees, you can still ski car to car.  booting was just easier coming back up the clearcut. 
i sent the ski area an email regarding the creek, haven't heard back yet...


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april-18-mt-shuksan-via-white-salmon
Clarence
2010-04-21 09:57:14