June 4, 2011, Nason Ridge, Rock Mtn to Smithbrook

In summer, the trail up the south side of Rock Mountain is wicked. It climbs steeply, switchbacks incessantly, and bakes cruelly in the afternoon sun. It€™s a trail Harvey Manning says in one of his 100 Hikes books, that€™s for the ornery if you€™re old, the stubborn if you€™re young. The backcountry skiers of spring, however, view the trail differently. The southern exposure melts the lower stretches of the path down to dirt in late spring and this lets us climb the steep, rocky terrain at the start of this route on foot rather than through technical skinning skills. The steepness off the trail also transports skiers quickly to snow level in a mile or two rather than subjecting them to endless miles of travel up a gentle road system.

During the first weekend of June, Tom Janisch and I discover another plus -- wildflowers. Hiking up the Rock Mountain Trail is a wildflower slideshow with Indian paintbrush, serviceberry, groundsel, dwarf waterleaf, kinnikinnick, trillium, and glacier lilies lining the corridor. For those of us headed up into the monochrome world of winter, all this color is a feast.

The trail transports us quickly upward and at the 4,800-foot level we hit the Bingo Line, that spot where in one step we move from dirt to skiable snow. We follow the snowed-over trail to the summit of Rock Mountain (6,852 feet) with its spectacular views of the Cascades. The mountains from Rainier to Baker are razor sharp today. What€™s not so sharp is our ability to identify them. There are perhaps 50 peaks we can identify, but with over 500 summits scraping the skyline this constitutes a pitiful batting average.

From the summit of Rock, we descend the mountain€™s massive 3,000-vertical-foot west face lined with the gunbarrels of ten impressive avalanche swaths. Sometimes venturing onto these slopes would be an invitation to throw your molecules into the great cosmic atom scrambler, but today the snow is anchored with the armor of frozen spring snow. The surface has softened and carves beautifully by 10:30 a.m. when we ski it. This will be turning to mush later in the day, but right now the slopes are a slice of paradise and we fly down to Snowy Creek in minutes.

The forests we find in the secluded backyard of the mountain are dominated by old hemlocks, some that require two or three tree-huggers to embrace. It's here that the route-finding turns interesting. We tour up the northernmost fork of Snowy Creek to a 5,130-foot pass; contour under several rocky summits forming the spine of Nason Ridge; thread a few more passes forming low spots in the ridge; and finally find ourselves touring up the northeast ridge of Peak 5,576, which sits above the Smithbrook Road and, on our USGS maps, forms the western-most extension of Nason Ridge. All day the character of the light and the big bald peaks surrounding us to the southeast in the Chiwaukums and to northwest in the Glacier Peak Wilderness are other worldly €“ they evoke vivid memories of spring tours in the European Alps.

From our final peak above the Smithbrook Road, we ski downhill through old-growth forests carpeted with soft, consolidated snow that carries us all the way down to the small swithbacks in the road. The water-saturated snow is slow but tree skiing rarely gets any better. On needle-carpeted snow, we snake around the moss-covered giants of the Northwest.

We intersect the Smithbrook Road and another 1.5 miles of poling and gliding cap off the day. The snow lasts all the way to Highway 2 but as soon as we click out of the skis and step onto the dirt flanking the tarmac, glacier lilies and trillium greet us.  Skiing should always be so sweet.

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