May 29, 2012, Mount Scott

After four days of camping and hiking across the high deserts and forests of Southern Oregon, we hoped to take at least one day and appreciate a high peak.  We had the ski gear in our car and the weather was looking good for Tuesday, so decided to try for Mount Scott.  We had the Scott Cr campground all to ourselves Monday night, and enjoyed a good night of sleep in the tent accompanied by the chorus sounds of the creek.

In the morning we drove up FS Road 2308/10, easily plowing over a couple of shallow snow drifts before stopping short of a series of larger ones at around 5,800 ft elevation.  We left the car at 7:30, hiking about 1/4 mile up the road, and then switched to skinning, cutting off the road in a westerly direction towards the mountain shortly after that.  The approach was very direct as we skinned up just climber's left of the SE ridge.  Near the top, we switched to booting and did a bit of boulder scrambling to achieve the summit ridge around 11.  The snow on the top of the SE face was already well baked by the time we got there, with a few inches of recent fall still unconsolidated and warm temperatures hitting it for the first time in a week.  We weren't to keen to ski the face under those conditions so relaxed on the summit to enjoy the views of Crater Lake and to eat some lunch.

We skied down just after noon, starting with a short ski traverse along the top of the west face, which was hard and scratchy, and then a descent of the snow ramp along the SE ridge.  The run followed through beautiful open old growth much of the way to the road, and we were able to ski to the car door with just a few short carries.  A quick dip in chilly Scott Creek capped the day, and we were on our way home from a great "Oregon appreciation" road trip.