June 29, Hood Wy'East Face

With a fresh partner for the day, we attempted to ski the Wy€™East face.  I skinned up to well above the top of Superbowl with reasonably promising conditions.  This is looking back down at my partner (who switched to climbing much earlier).






At first the climbing up higher was fine, but then the occasional posthole.  I switched from just my ice axe to ice axe + ski pole w/ self-arrest grip, which helped, but the conditions continued to deteriorate.  Every step then became a deep posthole.  The crust seemed like it would be supportive for skiing, but still would be horrible skiing.  And if the crust softened by the time of our descent, that still wouldn€™t be good either.  Here I am at ~800' below the top of the face deciding to bail.






The initial descent skied like impenetrable boilerplate, but look how easily my ski tails plunged into the snowpack.






Fortunately Superbowl was in nice enough shape that we skinned back up for another lap.  Heather was okay too, though getting sticky lower down.  Overall, ended up being a very nice outing despite the lack of achieving our €œobjective.€  Here€™s my partner booting up a short stretch to regain the ridge at the top of Memorial Bowl.