Home > Trip Reports > Dec 29, 2012, Silver Star GPNF

Dec 29, 2012, Silver Star GPNF

12/29/12
WA Cascades East Slopes North
3185
4
Posted by rootsman on 12/30/12 6:06am
I hooked up with OldHouseMan (pleasure to meet you, Aaron) and got out to Silver Star. We were stopped by snow about an hour (on skis) from the summer trailhead on the north side. The snow started piling up pretty quickly, and by the time we broke out of the trees onto the ridge, there was a least a foot and half of well packed snow with a couple inches of looser snow over the top. The coverage was consistently adequate, and we encountered a surprising amount of really nice snow.

We gained the ridge and headed south for the summit as the weather improved and the clouds thinned to bluebird for a couple of glorious hours. We made it to the top and had lunch shortly after noon. Ripping skins, we dropped in off the (steep) east face of the summit and skied down into the Washougal headwaters basin. We then skinned back up to a high point on the ridge which connects the summit with Bluff Mountain and helped ourselves to another lap.

The clouds started moving back in and it began snowing, so we decided to put the skins back on and try to pick a way back up and over the summit to our skin track. After a slightly sporty traverse across a short face, we regained the summit and our in-track. From here it was a pretty quick trip back along the ridge as the snow continued, mixed with the occasional sunbreak.

The road ski was, at least, mostly downhill, though the wheel ruts from all the monster trucks created some attention-grabbing bobsled runs. After making it past the target shooters in the road, the rest of the trip out was pretty uneventful.

The snow pack is pretty fat, and shows no real signs of going anywhere, especially with the predicted cold temps this week. The trick would be hitting the snow conditions right, but I heartily recommend that everyone get up there and give it a shot.

Thanks to Aaron for his enthusiasm for "skiing stupid stuff" and his strong work putting in the uptracks.

Good on you guys! I knew I should have circled back with you about this tour.  What was the round trip tour mileage?

Rootsman, Thanks for twisting my arm. That was a really good day.

author=Edgesport link=topic=26733.msg112718#msg112718 date=1356923523]
Good on you guys! I knew I should have circled back with you about this tour.  What was the round trip tour mileage?


I'm guessing 8 miles or so round trip.

Yeah, eight miles feels about right. About half road, half above the trees on the ridge. With the short days right now you would need a pretty early start if you want to get more than a couple of laps in the West Fork Washougal drainage, where some of the best lines are.

There are also some pretty nice west-facing slopes that come down from the ridge north of the summit, basically down from the 180 trail between the summit and the Silver Star TH. Stopping there and lapping could yield some good turns and save an hour or two of travel time.

This is a pretty decent map...
http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MEDIA/stelprdb5160926.pdf


Fantastic.  Great effort.  Way to go Jeff!  Thanks for the pix.  Love the skiing "stupid stuff" and can totally relate  :)

Reply to this TR

10501
dec-29-2012-silver-star-gpnf
rootsman
2012-12-30 14:06:49