May 29, 2011, Cascadian, Stuart
5/29/11
WA Cascades East Slopes Central
3187
1
After Becky's and my jaunt up to Longs Pass last weekend only to throw in the towel on Stuart due to less than stellar weather, we decided to roll the dice again with a potentially good enough forecast yesterday.
Andy and Mica joined us and we left the car (less than a mile from the TH) about 5am...a couple small spots near the TH are now bare but its still 99.9% snow to Longs Pass.
Stuart, just like last weekend, had some clouds floating around the top, but the sky certainly looked better than the previous weekend.
The lower slide alder meadows at the base of Stuart are starting to get pretty thin..lots of spots where we were skinning/skiing on less than 2ft of snow...not sure how much longer it'll be continuous.
The Cascadian is still in fine shape, an inch of new snow lower down, a couple inches mid-mountain, and about four inches on the final pitch to the false summit made for nice soft skiing conditions. When the sun would come out, the slopes were puking off the new snow in little hand-sized rollers. Fortunately the recent accumulation was pretty small on the east side otherwise the new snow could've been more worrisome.
Off and on clouds up high, with views to the Enchantments but a pretty solid wall of clouds to the west.
Got to the false summit around 1pm, decided to skip the summit and save the time and energy for getting our tired legs back over Longs Pass. Saw 4 or 5 parties coming up as we were headed down, and on the skin back to Longs we spotted a party skiing Ulrichs.
Heard a solitary thunder clap as we topped out at Longs...but never got rained on. Great day over on the east side.
Andy and Mica joined us and we left the car (less than a mile from the TH) about 5am...a couple small spots near the TH are now bare but its still 99.9% snow to Longs Pass.
Stuart, just like last weekend, had some clouds floating around the top, but the sky certainly looked better than the previous weekend.
The lower slide alder meadows at the base of Stuart are starting to get pretty thin..lots of spots where we were skinning/skiing on less than 2ft of snow...not sure how much longer it'll be continuous.
The Cascadian is still in fine shape, an inch of new snow lower down, a couple inches mid-mountain, and about four inches on the final pitch to the false summit made for nice soft skiing conditions. When the sun would come out, the slopes were puking off the new snow in little hand-sized rollers. Fortunately the recent accumulation was pretty small on the east side otherwise the new snow could've been more worrisome.
Off and on clouds up high, with views to the Enchantments but a pretty solid wall of clouds to the west.
Got to the false summit around 1pm, decided to skip the summit and save the time and energy for getting our tired legs back over Longs Pass. Saw 4 or 5 parties coming up as we were headed down, and on the skin back to Longs we spotted a party skiing Ulrichs.
Heard a solitary thunder clap as we topped out at Longs...but never got rained on. Great day over on the east side.
Nice Pete, glad you got the good weather. We were solidly ensconced in that western wall of clouds, but it didn't rain on us until the last few minutes of the de-proach, at least.
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