June 20-22, 2010, Goat Rocks, Old Snowy

Spring skiing has finally arrived! At least in the Goat Rocks. Taking friend Andrew along to break trail, we left early Sunday morning and made it from Portland to the North Fork Tieton trailhead in a surprisingly quick 3.5 hours. This despite the fact that we were temporarily delayed by a hundred runners in the road, who were apparently headed up Round Mountain.

The trail was in great shape on the way in, but was noticeably more chewed up on the hike out. Deep horseshoe prints in the trail seemed to indicate a possible explanation. We hit consistent snow shortly before the junction with the PCT, but the trail had melted out significantly by the time we headed out. Coming from McCall Basin on the way out, we kept our skis on until about a half mile before the PCT/NFT junction and then just booted through the alternating dry trail and steeply angled snowbanks until the trail was completely snow free. 

After a few route finding challenges, good luck and the occasional cut end of a log led us to McCall Basin, where we promptly found that the only spot in the whole basin that was melted out also happened to be a perfect campsite. Judging by a couple of old piles of horse sh*t, it serves as a horse camp in the summer, but we weren't complaining as the rest of the basin was three feet deep in wet snow.

It didn't look like there had been much or any fresh snow from the recent storm cycles that dumped on Hood, and in Glacier Basin we found a mostly consolidated pack that grew progressively and predictably softer as the day went on. There were scattered areas where we booted up through a 2-3 inch thick breakable crust over deep snowcone, but we were able to find excellent snow to ski by avoiding areas that had received early sun. We did see some small cornice collapses that caused sloughs, but none of these ran on any but the steepest slopes, and then they didn't run too far.

We found the easy way from McCall into Glacier Basin (hint-boot up the short slope at the start of the canyon and then follow the obvious bench) and enjoyed some great turns, including a memorable ski from the summit of Old Snowy on an inch of creamed corn over a packed base. Oh yeah, now I remember what's so great about spring skiing...

Didn't see another person from the moment we hit the trail, though tracks revealed a day hiker that passed unnoticed. We stopped for burgers and refreshments at the Blue Spruce in Packwood and got to watch the locals compete in a Wii bowling tournament on a big screen tv. Two thumbs up.