February 2, 2013, Mt Catherine XC loop
2/2/13
WA Snoqualmie Pass
1557
3
Started up Granite, less snow on the trail than two weeks ago was discouraging, so we bailed for Silver Peak, instead of skiing a rerun for the awesome Alaskan and Austrian. We skinned up east of Silver Fir groomers to Grand Junction, then skied down under Radio Mountain and up to Windy Pass. Conditiions looked variable continuing on to Silver and we had a time constraint so we descended the logging road back to Hyak to complete the loop. Hope someone reports conditions they found on Granite, wish I'd had more enthusiasm.
Granite was a shmoo fest for the lower 2/3 before becoming more consolidated, but it all skied surprisingly well. First time I've skinned the entire thing thanks to TBill's intense skin track straight up the face. Massive wet slide looks like it came down yesterday but we had no issues other than the occasional pinwheel.
author=altasnob link=topic=27311.msg114984#msg114984 date=1359854984]
thanks to TBill's intense skin track straight up
Yup, sounds familiar. Thanks for the report! Any wind? How far down did you ski?
Fairly stiff East wind up high kept things reasonably cool. We skied pretty much to the end of the slide path where the summer trail first hits the slide path and switches back to the left. There was a bit of bushwaking involved to get this far down though. The summer trail is quite annoying with skis right now because of all the exposed creeks to navigate, so we took our chances fighting the slide alder.
Reply to this TR
Please login first: