March 21-22 Tatoosh Traverse Fail
3/15/11
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
1716
0
Three of us headed down to the Tatoosh in hopes of hammering out a traverse in two days. Our plan was to head out East along the road and gain Stevens peak enabling us to follow ridges and high traverses over to Lane and ski the Zipper out ignoring Eagle and Chutla. That was the plan anyway, but you know what they say about the best laid plans...
Surprise sun breaks escorted us out of the parking lot after a 10 am gate opening. Unfortunately by the time we were scooting around Unicorn on our way to Stevens our favorite Southwesterly flow brought us moisture and wind and no visibility. Change of plans--we'll skip Stevens, gain the ridge under Unicorn and traverse under it gaining South slopes and camp at Ridge Lake. Even in the low visibility, the wide open slopes below Unicorn were clearly wind-loaded and the thought of sliding over the fearsome cliffs above Snow Lake with an acre of snow was less than appealing.
Change of plans. We'll go back down the ridge, and follow our skin track back to Foss Peak and we'll gain Ridge Lake at that shoulder. No problem we thought until we were near the top of the ridge and were nauseated by the whiteness of the whiteout. We descended through the trees into the drainage just East of the Castle where we spent a cozy night and lazy morning after deciding to bag the traverse and just find some good skiing.
Tuesday we awoke to mostly sunny skies and finding good skiing was not a problem. We skied two laps in that drainage, then skied from inbetween Castle and Pinnacle down to Reflection lake. We ditched our overnight pack and cleverly attached only shovels to ourselves for the final lap from as close to the summit of Castle as we could ski back to our packs at the lake.
It was a great trip to usher in spring. Even with new snow and cold winds you can still feel Spring in the sunshine and our surprise glasses tans evidenced the Sun's growing strength!
A few pics:
http://www.alpineevolution.net/2011/03/tatoosh-traverse-on-skis-sort-of.html
Surprise sun breaks escorted us out of the parking lot after a 10 am gate opening. Unfortunately by the time we were scooting around Unicorn on our way to Stevens our favorite Southwesterly flow brought us moisture and wind and no visibility. Change of plans--we'll skip Stevens, gain the ridge under Unicorn and traverse under it gaining South slopes and camp at Ridge Lake. Even in the low visibility, the wide open slopes below Unicorn were clearly wind-loaded and the thought of sliding over the fearsome cliffs above Snow Lake with an acre of snow was less than appealing.
Change of plans. We'll go back down the ridge, and follow our skin track back to Foss Peak and we'll gain Ridge Lake at that shoulder. No problem we thought until we were near the top of the ridge and were nauseated by the whiteness of the whiteout. We descended through the trees into the drainage just East of the Castle where we spent a cozy night and lazy morning after deciding to bag the traverse and just find some good skiing.
Tuesday we awoke to mostly sunny skies and finding good skiing was not a problem. We skied two laps in that drainage, then skied from inbetween Castle and Pinnacle down to Reflection lake. We ditched our overnight pack and cleverly attached only shovels to ourselves for the final lap from as close to the summit of Castle as we could ski back to our packs at the lake.
It was a great trip to usher in spring. Even with new snow and cold winds you can still feel Spring in the sunshine and our surprise glasses tans evidenced the Sun's growing strength!
A few pics:
http://www.alpineevolution.net/2011/03/tatoosh-traverse-on-skis-sort-of.html
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