March 13, 2005, Birthday Tour
3/15/05
WA Cascades East Slopes North
2533
2
Corinne and I unfortunatly could not be part of the Saturday Birthday tour trip, so we decided to go celebrate Kam's birthday without him on Sunday (Happy Birthday again Ted! ;D ). Funny to see when we came back on Sunday that we also did the exact same trip :-)
Corinne, Mike and I arrived at the parking lot at the Blue Lake trailhead at 7 am and found a lot of people getting ready for the day. We hiked up to the first col by taking the scenic route past Blue Lake where we met a group of skiers who had started a big fire to warm themselves up after a cold night. Having traversed so far right, we had to come back quite a bit to make it to the col and had some "challenging" ;) traverses through some avalanche debris.
We made it to the col above Madison Ave and only met one other skier up ther with his dog. We also watched a number of climbers reach the summit of the Early Winters spires.
From there on we would not see anyone else.
Madison Ave was in hard snow on top then nice corn on the buttom section. Here is Corinne skiing down Madison:
We then went up towads the second col. We pondered going up to Copper Mountain since it was still very early in the day, but it seemed like there were some rock bands on the lower sections. We neded up climbing to the summit on the left side of the second col. The extra climb was well worth the effort as the view from up there is amazing.
The ski down to the hairpin was a sub-optimal...most hard snow and avalanche debris...but I am always happy when I can ski all the way to the road ;D
My attempts at hithiking back to the car were not very successful (10 carsd passing by - none stopped). Corinne showed that she masters that art much better then I do, waiving her hands in all directions so that people thought something terrible had happened and we urgently needed some help. With that technique, the first car stopped and took me back to the trailhead...or did they stop because she looks better then I do ???
Corinne, Mike and I arrived at the parking lot at the Blue Lake trailhead at 7 am and found a lot of people getting ready for the day. We hiked up to the first col by taking the scenic route past Blue Lake where we met a group of skiers who had started a big fire to warm themselves up after a cold night. Having traversed so far right, we had to come back quite a bit to make it to the col and had some "challenging" ;) traverses through some avalanche debris.
We made it to the col above Madison Ave and only met one other skier up ther with his dog. We also watched a number of climbers reach the summit of the Early Winters spires.
From there on we would not see anyone else.
Madison Ave was in hard snow on top then nice corn on the buttom section. Here is Corinne skiing down Madison:
We then went up towads the second col. We pondered going up to Copper Mountain since it was still very early in the day, but it seemed like there were some rock bands on the lower sections. We neded up climbing to the summit on the left side of the second col. The extra climb was well worth the effort as the view from up there is amazing.
The ski down to the hairpin was a sub-optimal...most hard snow and avalanche debris...but I am always happy when I can ski all the way to the road ;D
My attempts at hithiking back to the car were not very successful (10 carsd passing by - none stopped). Corinne showed that she masters that art much better then I do, waiving her hands in all directions so that people thought something terrible had happened and we urgently needed some help. With that technique, the first car stopped and took me back to the trailhead...or did they stop because she looks better then I do ???
When we exited this way on Saturday and the wind was howling on the ridge. As each skier decended the ice particles would blast the followers waiting in the queue. We laughed that we needed earplugs because the skiing was so loud. But better skiing out than the alternative.
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