Home > Trip Reports > January 28, Snoqualmie area glory and glop

January 28, Snoqualmie area glory and glop

1/15/12
WA Snoqualmie Pass
5295
10
Posted by Jim Oker on 1/28/12 11:35am
We got in a very sweet run in west glades and trees from 5.5-ish to 4-ish before 12:30, were lured back up, more fun above 5 give or take, then it started to rain and we hit some of the most bizarre powder-just-turned-glop that I've skied. Sounds like what's described in the Tatoosh report. Isometric figure 11s on the mellow pitches and fun but don't twist-your-knee-or-hit-the-tree turns on steeper pitches. It was all smiles and toasts at the car.

Very nice tralbreaking-ease:turn-powderiness ratio today.
It definitely went from "that was awesome" to "WTF?" in about 15 minutes some time between 11:30 and 12:30.  It might have been all the body heat from the 20,000 people in Commonwealth Basin.

East aspect slope down to Kendall Peak Lakes was the best skiing of the day for us.

looking across from alpy there was a train of folks moving up the valley towards bryant with numerous skin tracks. chair peak had one classic track beautifully set to the col. amazing looking

Glad we went elsewhere in the Pass area where there were no trains of people. We saw a few snowshoers who briefly converged on our route, but no body heat buildup. But that didn't help when it started to rain...

We looked at some east slopes but we could see snow plumes arcing over them and thought better of it, which seemed in the end like a fine choice since the west glades we hit were so sweet!

Lots of people out and about in today. Saw a number of climbers on the summit of Chair Peak



As others have noted, found anything you could (and could not) want, including pow







my best skiing in the rain day ever

we got an early start, 0400, and found nice pow on the southeastish side of mt snoqualmie.  it was even snowing on us!




Hey BS:
Glad we got to call you down to the Lakes.  What a fun run.
We made it back to the ridge and were going to wait for you but it started to spit.  We skied W down to the luge run w/o the water affecting the snow too much.  It just slowed us down a bit wich was fine for a first time rune down an unscouted slope.

Did you have any trail breaking?

No trailbreaking for us, James.  We got out at dusk.  Bigger day than we had planned.  Next time we should sync up our plans  :)

A few pals and I did the North Face of Chair Peak route (from Volken's book) on Saturday.

I have taken a few years off to be lazy, ski inbounds, get married etc. Saturday was the first 'big' tour in maybe 4 years.

Wow - touring has grown in those four years. Instead of being the only people in the upper reaches of Chair there must have been 25 other people on the same or very similar routes. I even ran into Benj from FOAC at the lower notch. No complaints here...it was just a huge contrast.

Obligatory in-action shot:



Jim chowing before the glopfest.

Reply to this TR

9431
january-28-snoqualmie-area-glory-and-glop
Jim Oker
2012-01-28 19:35:57