July 28-29, 2012, Summerland/Fryingpan

     David and Daniel Paly and I did an overnight up here, after gawking at the area from Sunrise for a few years.  We had permits for Meany Crest, but decided to stay at Summerland and plead physical weakness if accosted by a ranger.  Saturday evening we skied into the cirque W of Panhandle Gap to explore options up to Meany Crest, and had a good run from a ridge on looker's left from about 7000'.  Clouds moved in while we skinned, same as next day.  Camping in the unbooked shelter was sweet! 
     On Sunday we got up leisurely style to let the snow soften, and forged a so-so booting route up the melting-out slopes of the Fryingpan.  It would have been torture to get to the assigned camping spots on Meany Crest ??? and useless for our next-day plan. That, in itself, was unclear, but we wanted to get up high on the big white fluffy slopes in the sky.  :)  Our climb up the snow tongue above the meadow was inefficient---start to the right through the meadow to get up there.  It is no longer possible to get up or ski down without a few unclickings.
     The ski down delivered everything we didn't know we wished for!  3200' of carve, gentle, carve, gentle, steep & icy enough to make the boards pop, routefind, steep butter, boulder hop down, encore hop, then a big finish of sparkly corn to a couple more moraines and the meadow-skip back to camp.
Excellent tour. There is enough snow to amuse a skier for a few more weeks.  The area is gloriously beautiful, and we never saw a soul when we were away from the Wonderland Trail.  One of our senior tour members was impressed at how well carrying A-frame works compared to diagonally carrying skis with boots clipped on!   ;)