March 6, 2011, Roosevelt NW side and Bryant Couloir

Dave. Eric, Benj and I left the Alpental parking lot this morning around 7:30 with the intention of skiing. Alot. We put a track up to the north side of Chair peak and had a run to Snow lake that got better as we got lower. Sort of punchy pow off the ridge that turned into boot deep goodness about 300' down. Stability was good- no evidence of any instability by any of us.

Here's a shot of the Bryant Couloir on the way to Chair's north side:



And here's video of the conditions just above the exit chutes down into the lake:



From there we made our way up to Roosevelt to ski the NW side, a route Pete A described last month here: http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?topic=19693.0

On our way up:



I took a video of our descent on Roosevelt's NW side, but it's terrible. To borrow a phrase from jwplotz, keep your expectations low.



We toured to the NE above Gem lake and had a wonderful ski down to Snow Lake. That shot was an unexpected bonus- great snow and fun terrain. And for those interested, no evidence of instability on any of the aspects we skied.

Here's a shot from the ridge above Snow Lake, with Malekwa Pass in the distance:



At Snow Lake we regained our skin track and followed it back up towards Malekwa Pass. A few parties were doing the Chair peak circumnav so we had a track up and over the pass, and all the way to the Bryant Col. Thanks whoever you were. 

Snow on the S (or is it W?) side of Malekwa pass was pretty sun affected, but fun and fast. Snow in the Bryant Couloir was heavy, but stable. The constriction is completely filled in so we had a nice and mostly continuous descent all the way to source lake.

Thanks boys for the great day. I needed it.