Home > Trip Reports > May 22, 2011, El Dorado

May 22, 2011, El Dorado

5/22/11
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
6262
5
Posted by snow_crystal on 5/23/11 8:03am
Victor and I climbed/skied Eldorado car-to-car on Sunday. Once again the rain was coming down hard when we left Seattle but it only rained/snowed on us for a few minutes all day. It even cleared sufficiently to give us excellent views from the summit, great visibility for most of the ski down, and sunburned hands (light-weight gloves a necessity this time of year). No other skiers on the mountian but many climbers creating a large highway to the summit.

The Cascade River road is open and in excellent condition all the way to the Eldorado trailhead (gated after that), so yes Good2Go I€™ll save you the post, €œa car-to-car strategy should be no problem for a fit party right now€  ::). Continuous snow cover starts around 4000 ft, right where the slide alder and boulders begin  :). We left our shoes and skinned from there and we were able to ski all the way back to our shoes on the return. The snow was decent corn with a little fresh on the east facing slopes from the summit area back down to the inspiration glacier (7400 ft), making for a good 1200 ft run.  The snow was heavy and wet for the traverse back across the glacier; it felt like we were water skiing at times. Wet sloughs were prevalent on the steeper south and south-east slopes below the 6400 ft notch. The slides made us a bit nervous but thankfully they moved slowly.

All in all a fantastic day in the mountains despite a mediocre forecast; sometimes it pays to just go anyway.

That last picture screams Cascadia!

To paraphrase a famous French man "Vive le Cascadia libre!".   :)

Additional pictures of this beautiful Cascadia country can be found at : https://picasaweb.google.com/victormesny/Eldorado#

Another great trip and report.

keep it up!

and excuse my ignorance, but what famous french man are you talking about?

author=alecapone link=topic=20931.msg89437#msg89437 date=1306339151]
but what famous french man are you talking about?


Charles de Gaulle "Vive le Québec libre!", July 24, 1967.

A few more pictures with one skiing Eldorado East ridge before the next rolling wave of clouds comes in.

Thanks for that post- we followed and quoted your advice in dicey forcast and went up the following week-

you gotta pay to play/ gotta gamble to win, eh!

The slog can be underestimated...

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8663
may-22-2011-el-dorado
snow_crystal
2011-05-23 15:03:08