Home > Trip Reports > April 30-May 1, 2011, Sibley Creek

April 30-May 1, 2011, Sibley Creek

4/30/11
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Posted by Charlie Hagedorn on 5/2/11 12:12am
Ambitious sunny plans were winnowed by the avy hazard to few, then nearly none. With a later start (9:30 am?) and uncertain snow, we decided it was time to see if an old favorite might become one of Susan's too.

Sticky snow in the trees meant hard work and skin wax. Careful route selection found us in the alpine soon enough. Once there, we had only glimpses of views of the lookout before "mostly cloudy" took on its full meaning in a whiteout. With only a short distance left to go, it was tempting to wait it out. With rising wind and snow, Susan had the sensible idea to dig in; the wind wall eventually became a fine sub-snow dwelling.

The whiteout continued well past dark, but cleared by 1 am. The morning light was very fine. We rambled around the alpine slopes, checking out views and hunting for ever-elusive good skiing. The route to the mostly buried lookout is currently guarded by cornices, steep rime, or both; bring a shovel and lots of time.

Susan suggested we get out of dodge before the skiing got really unpleasant, which bought us enough time on frozen snow to make a traverse in the open toward Sibley Creek. Trees skied well, if wet, deep, and heavy. The road ride was easy going down to ~2,600'.

The alpine snowpack is _so fat_. Gonna be a good summer.

Snow: ~1' of heavy pow with a soft sun crust Sunday morning. It sat atop the last sun crust. Our snow cave provided a look at the snow near the ridge. Very solid (~1F/pencil) but lowish density dry snow characterized much of the excavation, emerging as lightweight Q2 igloo blocks (when we could chop it). Depth estimation is tricky, as we were tunneling sideways, but ~4-7' down, we found ~4" of dry 2-3mm facets atop more solid snow.

Avy: Couple smallish (100' wide, 2-300' run, ~4-5' crown?) climax slides near the parking lot, initiating on rock slabs below trees; one very recent. Wee natural cornice failures on all aspects hadn't triggered anything in the alpine. S-facing slopes showed some activity, but not a lot, by ~10 am Sunday. W faces had the most activity, but only some of the many peaks we could see had large fresh crowns - that may have already changed... Stability seemed reasonable everywhere we went, when we went. Sun and ~20 mph E wind all morning, with spindrift.
"4-7' down, we found ~4" of dry 2-3mm facets atop more solid snow"

Hey Charlie - what aspect and elevation were you at when you found this?

nice day out !  thanks for the report.

The cave (looks like a little bombhole) is just over Susan's left shoulder in the last photo - NW aspect, 6600', just uphill from where the summer trail hits the saddle. The ridge definitely sees lots of wind effect/loading/etc. The layer of sugar made cave excavation easier, once we found it.  Call it 3-4"? Susan spent more time tunneling along the facet seam and may have more insight.

Were you the car with the 5 lb. bag of Dilettante chocolate covered espresso beans riding shotgun?

We were just a little worried - not about the beans - but when we came to the crossing shortly before the trailhead parking area we saw your tracks disappear under a recent slide, and couldn't see if they continued on the other side...



We traversed around the bottom of the slide area and were relieved to find tracks on the other side.



We were wondering if the taller area, to the right in the pic above, would release on Sunday, but it sounds like by the time you got back down it hadn't.

By the time we started up through the woods the trees had turned into rain machines, it was wet and ugly. We put up with less than an hour of that knowing we'd have at least two more, and called it.  The weather, as you mentioned, wasn't clearing as predicted either, and we wondered how that would effect cooling for the night...


Thanks for the report.  Nice pics!  I'm just a tad jealous...


author=cumulus link=topic=20714.msg88334#msg88334 date=1304361677]Were you the car with the 5 lb. bag of Dilettante chocolate covered espresso beans riding shotgun?


Yep - that was us.  The friend I bought them from claims that the 6 lb. bags are $26 at Cash&Carry?

The tracks you saw under the slide may have been from folks that preceded us. We saw similar tracks under chunder. We crossed the chunder while it was pretty frozen Saturday morning (and boogied a little when we did), so our track might've been hard to see? Coming home, it looked a little dirtier, but the slide didn't look any bigger. 

Thanks for your east-going track toward the Sibley drainage - they made routefinding easy in the lower half of the trees. Cool to see your tracks wrapping around the base of the slide too :)!

thanks for the report!
could you also please convey how far up the road (or how close to the trailhead) you were able to park?  i suppose the road's melted out this time of year, usually...

~2600', just before the Sibley crossing. Good shape up to there.

To be a little more precise, we parked at 2400' and started at ~10:30 a.m., according to the magic-locating-device.

Our track is attached, along with a picture of the lookout from the highest summit in case it helps.

Speaking of drafts, it was significantly windier than expected, especially on Sunday.  Above treeline (~5400'?) the 4 cm crust still hadn't softened by the time we started our descent at noonish.

I was particularly {im/de}pressed by the amount of snow that was able to stick to the tops and bottoms of my skis on the uptrack on Saturday, despite my best efforts.  The snow seemed to be particularly attracted to my tips and tails.  Especially fun were the times when huge clumps would fall *off* my skis, launching a leg forward unexpectedly.  :)

P.S:  The snow cave is pretty roomy and can be rented out for short-term stays.  (Terms negotiable.)  Tenants are responsible for maintenance.  Tenants may wish to bring a rain fly or other equipment for cutting down on draftiness.

I am having a deja-vu moment...

My only atttempt ended somewhere around your snow cave with the same vertigo inducing white out. Probably should have toughed it out and dug in like you two. Our crew tucked tail and ran due to me wearing my sissy pants.

well done!


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april-30-may-1-2011-sibley-creek
Charlie Hagedorn
2011-05-02 07:12:44