May 3, 2013, Mt. Thielsen, SW Approach

Mt. Thielsen offers some great terrain, spectacular scenery, and an enjoyable hike in.  We were fortunate to hit it with good corn conditions, which was a definite bonus.  We hiked in via the Mt. Thielsen trail, which is very easy to follow, with blue diamond markers posted frequently.  At the SW ridge, we turned eastward, following the ridge to up on the SW face - we didn't summit but just went for the skiing.

We started down around 12:30 and after some good open skiing on the upper slopes, were able to link turns through the trees to within about a 1/2 mile of the road (probably longer now).  After stopping by Diamond Lake Resort to replenish our drinking water supplies for camping, there was a bit of excitement driving out when we came upon a roadblock put up by S&R crew for a helicopter landing.  An Apache helicopter landed shortly after (big ship!) enroute to a rescue on Mt. Bailey, where a snowmobiler had apparently broken his leg.  It looked like they were plucking him off of the SE Ridge from what we could see - hopefully he was all right.