January 8, 2005, North Central Cascades

After looking at the Baker webpage and seeing the report of 20'' overnight I had to head north.  Contacted Jim and he was down to car camp.  Pulled up to the trailhead just after 9pm.  Couple inches of snow on the ground.  We woke to find another inch or 2 overnight.  Temps were in the mid 20's and a light breeze lingered.  Jim thought there would be enough snow to skin from the car up the ridge.  He made it about 50ft before throwing his gear back on his pack. ;D  After a mile and half and 1000vt we finally reached our usual skinning point.  Up to 6" of new here on top of hard crust.  After another mile or two of traversing we arrived into the basin.  Here the temps were cold and clouds moved away to let some sun thru.

Did a pit at 5300ft on a 30 degree sw aspect that was sheltered by trees.  Dug to the crust layer about 2ft down.  We got it to shear with effort about a foot down.  Right where the new snow and last weeks consolidating snow met.  Compression test yeilded a failure on the top 6''.  Top layers just crumbled but rest below seemed good.  So we skinned another couple hundred feet until we reached the base of our final traverse across a steep section.  Dug another pit on a 30 degree sw aspect.  Compression test had the same result with the upper layers crumbling and firming layers down below.  However it sheared a foot down without effort.  I just started to place my shovel blade behind the isolated column and that was enough to pop 12'' loose.  Yikes!  I couldn't believe it so I did another one.  Same.  Slope was just to sketch to take a chance here.  What about further over.

I started to skin while Jim watched eagerly.  I made it to some rollers that had been beaten by the winds.  I stopped at 6050ft before I decided to turn around.  Jim stopped couple hundred feet below.  Winds and clouds started rolling thru and light was becoming flat.  Plus I was running out of wind scoured sections to skin up.  I dropped in on the lee side of these rollers and found variable deep powder conditions.  Anywhere from boot deep to thigh deep.  Snow was a cross between powder, wind blown, and styro-pow.  The pow was face shot excellent, wind blown still nice, but the styro-pow was ever so tricky.  Really got that floaty feel. ;D

Between conditions being sketch and Jim not feeling his best we decided to call it a day.  We were able to ride and pick our way down most of the way.  What a great day despite avi conditions.  We didn't see a single soul up here except us.