May 26, 2012, Kendall Lakes and Saddle

Jonathan, Jim and I met for a Cascade Backcountry Ski Patrol day tour to Kendall Lakes near Snoqualmie Pass. The tour follows FS roads 9090 and 2235 across I-5 from Hyak. We parked at 2600 ft and figured we would have to hike adecent part of the road. We were pleasantly surprised by how little we had to carry our skis, only about 3 or 4 short carries of 100 yards or less. We were less pleasantly surprised by the amount of "brown klister" embeded in the melting snow. Guess what dog owners? Poop doesn't degrade when it's frozen!

Weather was beautiful and we left the road at the switchback at about 4100ft, crossed the drainage and headed up a gentle clearcut slope toward the lower lake (4400ft). We had lunch at the second lake where Jonathan decided to take a nap. Jim and I ascended a steep wooded slope on reasonably firm snow to the upper lake, skirted the S shore, and headed up to the saddle at 5500ft under the cliffs lining the upper basin. Snow was getting quite soft, but wasn't too bad. Great view of the Catwalk, and the summits of Granite and Snoqualmie Mountain (?). The descent was soft and heavy, but extremely enjoyable. I kept creating snowballs about twice the size of a bowling ball on my turns that rolled behind me, nearly taking me out when I turned across their path!

We reconnected with Jonathan at the lower lake, traversed SW, and grabbed a few more turns down to the road at the hairpin. The ski out was fairly quick, though there had clearly been some melting during the day. We didn't have to carry our skis much more than  in the morning.

Really pleasant, moderate tour, that will become a road-hiking slog in the very near future. I'm really glad we hit it when we did.

Here is a link to a video:  http://youtu.be/6pn4CB_eUgY