4-30-11, Silverstar Washington

This turned more into a hike... or recon for another day. Unconsolidated wet heavy snow kept us out of the steep ski terrain surrounding Silverstar's Summit. Accessed via the Grouse Vista trailhead, and hiked in mostly along the 180F trail, easy enough to follow. Trail traverses a NW aspect, hasty pits showed saturated heavy snow, large debri paths from natural releases in a few places, we determined that we would not be returning this same path as the day warms up. Silverstar is a small but beautiful summit with a lot of terrain that seems bigger than the topo map shows. Steep terrain on all aspects can be had, most all ski into terrain traps from my point of view. We did ski 2 very short runs, the tree skiing was very tight and boxed in in places and the turns for me were more survival skiing... my touring partner makes skiing crud look easy! We explored around to a butte on the ridge extending north of the SS summit, cliffed out on the NE side we found a fun looking couloir entrance my touring partner named €œBluebag Couloir€... to put it nicely :)
Turned back along the ridge and did a side trip to the summit of Sturgeon Rock, a beautiful basalt looking pinnacle. By now the sun was making more of an appearance, getting off the rock we cut across a short steeper slope where every step set off heavy wet point releases that carried well into the trees below, large pinwheels. The rest of the tour home we stayed on the ridges and avoided the slope traversing from our tour in. Safe routefinding was straightforward, but our day was all touring. All the evidence around us kept us out of any skiable slopes. Silverstar has a lot of steep terrain to ski in the right conditions, but not this weekend. It was a fun day to hike and explore.