May 13, 2011, North Twin Sister

A game group of hearty souls made the long journey up the maze of logging roads, to ascend the northern bowl of N Twin.  Hitting snow about 2800'  firm crust turned to icy crust about 4500', ski crampons made for easy going. Around 5800, we found 4-6" of new over soft breakable crust.  we assessed the avy paths, debris, and wind loading in the bowl as well as any potential hangfire to plan a safe route up to what we hoped was the true summit.  Around 6200 the conditions got a little icy so we down climbed and traversed W to softer snow, boot packing it up to the summit.  We were happy about attaining our goal but the descent looked a little trickier from the top than it did going up.  There was 6" of new on a supportive ice crust with a pretty steep entry.  A few turns down, Dave set off a slump which gathered the warmed snow below and rapidly increased in size, traveling far down the slope.  We were careful to go one at a time.  Even so the snow quality had changed in the time since climbing it and summiting, making for a bit heavier turns, but not too heavy to enjoy the ski all the way back to the car(with some maneuvering through slide alder which is reclaiming the road.)