Home > Trip Reports > December 16, 2011, Tatoosh Range, Foss Peak

December 16, 2011, Tatoosh Range, Foss Peak

12/16/11
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
3706
5
Posted by andybrnr on 12/17/11 6:54pm
Got a last minute invite from TBill to join him and Cumulus for a foray into the Tatoosh. We departed SEA at 0700ish, skinning from Narada by perhaps 9:45? Cruised down the road to the Reflection Lakes, then angled uphill through gloppy mashed potatoes towards the saddle just E of the Castle. Snow conditions improved rapidly above 5800 ft or so.

Dropped S over the ridge E of the Castle for several hundred ft of nice turns in snow I have a hard time accurately describing... felt sort of what I imagine skiing dunes of heavy, coarse sand. We skinned from there on a traverse up towards the small lake nestled on the ridge below the W slope of Foss Peak (which oddly is not named on most Topo maps, took digging on Summit Post to figure it out). Skinned up to the summit of Foss and traversed E a few hundred yards along the ridge to get a feel for the terrain... overhanging cornices above cliffs down into the bowl didn't want to let us into the large N facing bowl between Foss and Unicorn, so we headed back to ski the W face of Foss, which yielded lovely dense powder turns down to the lake... good enough to go back for another helping.

After the second lap, which we extended back down the S side of the ridge slightly, we skinned back up to the lake and dropped onto the North facing slopes down towards Louise Lake, which had some nice steep pitches through two gulleys. Skinned back to Narada with a party of three that had been exploring similar terrain. We arrived at the car as twilight faded at roughly 5:00. Fantastic day out in the mountains with great partners, thanks guys!

Link to rough route: http://www.hillmap.com/m/agtzbG9wZW1hcHBlcnIQCxIIU2F2ZWRNYXAY_K4NDA

Nice TR.  The use of Hillmap is a great tool.

That's a money tour for sure !
Two things to add .
1) If you had skied a little farther south on your traverse from Foss you would have reached the passable saddle leading east to Unicorn Glacier/Unicorn. All doable in day by a strong party
2) The drainage you skied out to the road is the Sunbeam  creek drainage .
Thanks for the report

Like Robie said.  Lots of goood stuff out there.  I will say, however, that the shaded stuff that had powder last wk is now wet and soaked and gloppy, where as the sun-melted stuff and the thin stuff lower down in that area is thin, heavy, and only covers a few inches of the crust and made for our best skiing in that area yesterday.

Looks like the snow is on the way this wk for higher elevations (5k+).  Finaly!

thanks for the report Andy. fun times! - good choice Trevor.  (5am wasn't happening Sat. morning... did make it up to S-Pass by 8 tho)

The clouds covering the Tatoosh most of Friday seemed to protect the snow from further heaviness, but then gracefully broke by the end of the day.
By (scenic) contrast Little Tahoma right across from us seemed to hold the sun all day.

Snow was sticky starting out lower down for sure - the going definitely got better (and lighter!) after Trevor miraculously discovered a sliver of glop stopper in the depths of his pack half way through the day...
time to get some back in mine.


initial conditions



looking towards Unicorn



seconds



heading back down



Reply to this TR

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december-16-2011-tatoosh-range-foss-peak
andybrnr
2011-12-18 02:54:17