Feb 9, 2013, Blewett Pass, Bojangle/Tronsen Ridges

2/9/13

WA Cascades East Slopes Central

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Posted by knitvt on 2/9/13 1:44pm

The sequence of thoughts that went on today:

(For reference, http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8095/8459665895_6b055b67e9_c.jpg" />

4) While picking our way, and eventually booting, up the ridge's first 1000 feet of patchy snow, ice and increasing amounts of dirt and rock: "Isn't it nice we decided to take the skis for a walk today. And wow, is it ever going to suck coming back down this."
5) At 4800 feet, looking at beautiful views and sitting in the sunshine (next to a cell tower): "Okay. Even if the snow sucks, this is quite lovely and totally worth it."

6) Continuing along the ridge, as the snow slowly increased in both quality and quantity: "Hey, you know, some of this might actually be okay to ski back down. There is even a little bit of powder on the north side of the ridge. Neat."
7) Finding some reasonable north-facing slopes to descend between the 5345' and 5575' peaks: "Great, we can descend here and not need to pick our way back down the ridge."
8) Descending that slope: "WHOOOOOOOOO!" For the most part, there was ~6" of powder over a supportive base. Breakable crust in some places (and all over other aspects), but generally avoidable here.
9) After following a small road not on the map back to the cell tower and skiing the less-treed north-facing slopes below it: "Best turns of the day. Beautiful."

A final aside - can anyone unravel the mystery of why the ridge is called "Bojangle Ridge"? The Wenatchee Outdoors trip description says "At 4,800 feet youll reach the jangling manmade structure we named this ridge for. We're not telling what it is, but youll know it when you see it." All we found was the AT&T cell tower station, which decidedly made no noise the entire time we were there. Was there something awesome (and jangly) that used to be there and has since been replaced?

2/9/13 10:22pm

atomic

We went from... well, at least the view is good...

to "dirting"

to this is looking a little better...

to THIS!

2/10/13 2:37am

avajane

Sorry to hear Blewitt wasn't everything you wanted. It was a beautiful day from the look of your pictures. Snow usually comes pretty reliably from Thanksgiving through December and then the storms don't make it there as often. Look at Mission Ridge's snow depths and you'll see that 50 inches is a good base there (and it's high). I think I know the area you skied. I approached it from a logging road to the north a few weeks ago but the snow was very bad so I didn't go all the way up to the tower.

2/10/13 3:30am

avajane

Here's a picture of the cell tower I took from about a 1/4 mile farther up the gated road on the north side. I skied only 1/3 of the slope that day as the snow was terrible and it was getting late. Was that the place? I've been wanting to go back with more/better snow.

2/10/13 3:33am

knitvt

author=avajane link=topic=27426.msg115427#msg115427 date=1360521455]
Sorry to hear Blewitt wasn't everything you wanted.

Nah, it was a great day! And would have been even if we hadn't found the good snow; the sunshine couldn't be beat.

author=avajane link=topic=27426.msg115432#msg115432 date=1360523129]
Here's a picture of the cell tower I took from about a 1/4 mile farther up the gated road on the north side. I skied only 1/3 of the slope that day as the snow was terrible and it was getting late. Was that the place? I've been wanting to go back with more/better snow.

That looks like the second (and best) slope that we skied. There's a road (possibly the same road?) that loops up to the cell tower, and we skied the north-facing slopes directly under that road. The first 300-400' was great powder, below that (also due to shifting our aspect a bit) started to develop some breakable crust. If we'd skied that top section earlier in the day, we would have lapped it it was so nice.

2/10/13 4:20am

avajane

Let me know next time you come over. I have a cabin10 miles down the road and can often give condition reports. I'm sure that's the same road (211) that I went up. It has parking access about a mile down from the Summit and it's about a mile on the road till the slope has enough room between the trees. Pretty good approach to be able to ski a nicely angled north slope at that elevation!

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