March 1, 2012, Red Mtn Pt. 5703' (Cle Valley)

Margy and Pico rallied me for an old favorite. 
From Seattle: Head toward Cle Elum, 85 miles east of Seattle on I-90.  Exit 80 has a hwy exit sign for Roslyn/Salmon La Sac.
This is 20 miles north of Cle Elum/Roslyn in the Cle Elum Valley.
Starting on the Cooper River Road FS 46, heading NW, at Salmon La Sac we took one of our our customary approaches:
1 mile up Cooper Road to 2nd creek crossing
Turn left into forest
Skin into big clearcut
Enter Basin 1 (SE most basin) on upper logging spur
Take a right off road into the NW trending gulch at 4400 feet
Attain east ridge at 5200' (dug a quick pit below here at 5000 feet east facing slope 32 degrees: CTH 28 Q3 shear on older powder/storm snow interface at 20cm)
Finish to Pt. 5703' via east ridge

Ski stable east/SE slopes in great powder to 4700 feet!

Skin back up to eastern twin rock knobs (east of 5703') topping out at 5360+ feet.

Ski the great open subalpine forested NE ridge off these knobs back to the clearcut continuing in clearcut on NE aspects to lower road.  Traverse descending lower road a bit SE back to edge of oldgrowth.
Ski great snow to 2600 feet in shade of the old growth tree edge for a 3000 vertical foot descent!  Hit the main groomed road and bomb home.

Stability notes:  Since our compression test was pretty low angle we could have done a companion shovel shear, but we stayed on 32 degree slopes in the open for the most part, skiing steeper trees as necessary. 
Nothing like the various snowpack weaknesses this past weekend at Snoqualmie Pass.  We found surprisingly stable powder: a few inches (fist hardness) overnight, on 6 more (fist) from a few nights ago, on increasingly denser old powder (fist to 4 finger) to 20" depth.  No buried surface hoar detected and no rain crust above 4500 feet.  South aspects got a bit cooked but refrose into easy carvable thin crust.  South aspects also provided some of our open skin approaches due to another older buried sun crust helping to bridge and stabilize the slope.  Anything NE to North was fantastic as was the upper east/SE facing slopes.  Great turns top to bottom which can be rare since Salmon La Sac is  at 2400 feet.
More pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23557848@N03/sets/72157629492328707/