December 4, 2004, Silver Queen Peak

Woke up early to check snow fall telemetry and only place that received any new was Baker as of 5am.  My plans were to head to Crystal and see what Green Valley had to offer.  With no new I was skeptical.  So I went anyway and after a stop at Buzzy's for grub, I pulled into the lot just after 8.

Visibilty was good at the base (4400ft.) but cloudy up top.  There was a light drizzle as I started skinning but that soon changed to light snow by the time I arrived at the cat track leading to R-Ex.  Glad it did cause I was getting tired of dragging all the wet snow sticking to my skins and split.  I continued up the cat track and around 100ft. above the lift the winds started picking up out of the east, which was a good sign.  I followed the cat track to the top of Iceburg Gulch (6300ft.).  By that time the clouds had moved away and I had my first good view of Green Valley.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a grip of snowmobile tracks that had followed the usual groomers path.

So I continued skinning up the ridge to the Summit House at 7000ft. (my altimeter was 50ft. shy)  Wind was really gusting here.  Just my luck I found the front door open but the main lodge was locked.  However, I noticed a heat lamp on the ceiling and didn't waste anytime cranking it up.  After paying 400 stones for a midweek thanx Crystal. ;D  After warming up I scoped my line down a north aspect ranging from 30 to 35 degrees.  There were still a few rocks on top that were buried under 6 inches of snow.  Wind seemed to take alot off the top.  Shortly below, maybe 10 feet or so, the slope was a foot of nice wind blown on top of a well consolidating base.  Stability was also good as there were no sluffing or sounds of snow settling beneath.  I rode to the top of Iceburg Gulch and headed up for seconds.

By time I reached the top my friends Chris and Renee showed up.  I rode down to them and skinned up with them.  I was wondering what took them so long.  They decided to ascend via way less traveled.  Straight up Iceburg.  Yikes!  Not long after two more people showed up.  Their names were Doug and Howard.  Two die hard Crystal locals.  We chatted for a bit about Crystal.  Come to find out they were some of the people involved, with Joedabaker and others, who appealed and won the whole boundary issue, which would have restricted access into Crystals many bc areas.  Anyways after chatting some more and warming up again we all headed outside.  The weather had cleared a bit and the sun tried to come out.  We parted our ways and rode off.  Don't know about them but our lines down sure had it's moments.  Up top was nice but down low...a carve here, carve there, dooh rock, and on and on.  Nothing a little p-tex can't fix.  Still a great day with plenty of lines left in the valley.  On the way home we stopped at Wapiti (elk) Woolies and I couldn't resist buying a humping elk wooly. ;D