April 26, 2013, Mt. Angeles Environs

I met Gary at his house at 8 am and we headed up with open plans to get on top of Klahane Ridge, scope out the conditions, and make for an adventurous day.  We hit the trail around 8:30 and temps were at about 54 degrees.

We started our ascent booting up some mud and grass for about 100 feet until we hit the snow and continued booting for probably another 1000K through beautiful forest and early morning sunlight until we felt skinning would be more efficient where the trees opened up and the sun started to warm the snow.  Ski crampons were useful, especially in the shaded areas.  But the sun was already warming things up considerably.





We heard metal scraping on the snow when Mt. Angeles E summit was in sight and saw Tyler emerge out of the trees.  Radios were not necessary :)





We joined forces and headed up to the saddle on Klahane ridge just east of Mt. Angeles' east summit.  Considering our options it was decided to boot up the east face, gain the northern buttress, and compare the northern aspects to the eastern plethora of couloirs.  







The northern bowl offered over 2K of descent with the option to come out onto an unnamed cole just NE of where we stood with another 2K descent into the basin north of Klahane.  The eastern couloirs offered some tight turns but shorter runs.  We opted for the longer adventure and descents.  We then skirted around the S face of Angeles' East summit and found a nice point in the middle of the ridge between the E and W summits.  







The snow felt creamy and perfect from there.  And it was for about 300 feet until we hit some boney stuff (but still quite skiable).  That lasted another 200 feet and then the rest was rich, smooth corn with a rather long and playful run through the short trees.



We skinned and booted our way back up to the cole on the NE ridge and from there made another extremely fun descent of uninterrupted turns to the basin below Klahane.  The snow on the E aspect was much warmer and a bit trickier.  Our skis penetrated about 4-6 inches.  Tyler's DPS wailers were the skis to have.  Speed kept my 90mm skis above the slush and conditions were made for long super G turns.  We triggered some very slow moving wet slides, yet things were certainly holding together nicely.  We enjoyed some needed spice from mayan chocolate before we started our final ascent out of the basin to Klahane ridge.  



On our way out we ran into some great people from Port Townsend who had set some beautiful tracks on the N slopes of Klahane.  We then made our final descent down the S slope of Klahane and found things to be super slushy for the first 500 ft in sun exposed areas.  Blood was spilt due to a viscous tree branch.  Surprisingly the snow improved in firmness the further we made our descent.  I was surprised that we actually had to do minimal survival/combat skiing on the way out due to Tyler's excellent route finding on the way out.



Thanks to Gary for taking the day off work and to Tyler for catching up and lending us his strength and enthusiasm.

It was a fun group and a great day for me to explore and area I had been contemplating for at least a couple of years now.