January 29, 2011, Commonwealth basin

Started off the morning in Tacoma, then promptly drove up to North bend where we were supposed to meet a partner. He ended up leaving the key for his rocket box back at home in Seattle, and didn't end up coming touring with Chris and I. The skin up started in the rain, but it turned to snow at about 4k or so. There was a good 2" of snow at about 4,500' and about 6" at 5500. When we were deskinning on a nice little bench we found in the protection of the trees we heard a thunderous sound that turned out to be an avalanche that we couldn't see due to the fog. We made some sweet turns down the bowl, and soon arrived back at the base of the skin track. We had to skin out a little, but skied most of the way. We didn't follow our skintrack out, and ended up getting cliffed out a little bit and had to skin for 20 minuted to get back to the river crossing, from there on, the skiing down the trail was pretty shitty, but i was sliding on snow, so i had a good time regardless. There was definitely some snow moving up top in the bowl on top of the crust, and we made a few good sluff's. Stopped at the north bend bar and grill on the way back and filled up on a delicious burger. We were soaked, but had an awesome adventure into the commonwealth basin. pictures coming soon!