Home > Trip Reports > October 3, 2013, North Cascades, Lewis Glacier pow

October 3, 2013, North Cascades, Lewis Glacier pow

10/3/13
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Posted by philfort on 10/4/13 2:25am
Just to give folks an idea of the snowpack up there...

Jeremy and I headed to highway 20 yesterday, somewhat intent on trying to summit Black Peak (depending on conditions).

There's no snow at the trailhead, and about 1.5 feet by the time you reach Heather Pass. The traverse over towards Lewis Lake was very tedious across the boulder fields covered with snow - definitely a lot of work on this approach.

Lewis Lake had about 1 foot of snow. Beyond that, climbing up towards Wing Lake the snowpack deepens considerably starting around 6200ft.

Conditions didn't seem good for Black Peak (although now that the fog had lifted, we could see the snow looked thinner and windswept around Black for some reason), so we headed up the Lewis "Glacier" for some powder (the glacier is pretty much gone, there are just a few remnants here and there).

And boy was it good! Without a doubt the finest powder I've skied in October - light, stable, right-side-up, and not affected by wind at all. It was fantastic powder for any time of the year. Ski penetration was maybe a foot, and snowpack depth around 4ft at 6800ft.



We made roughly a 1000ft descent to the flats, then went partway back up to ski the moraine headwall again since it was so good.

We skinned up the moraine again to get a better line on the descent to Lewis Lake, and found some powder on this aspect too if we played it right. We were able to traverse to the other side of the lake before having to switch to skins and slog back up the boulder field to Heather Pass.

This is certainly a long way to go for some powder (I think it was 10.5 hours RT), but hey it's October 3.


wow!  looks like the limited turns were well worth the lengthy approach.  Nicely done.

Nice! Thanks for the TR; helps plan for weekend silliness.

My gosh, you guys really got the goods!  Nice to see those great powder turns, I'm green with envy!

Nice work, figuring it out and being persistent. I'm down in the LK Tahoe area. Temps.are dropping here.. Hopin' for turns like you got, end of Oct.  * *

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october-3-2013-north-cascades-lewis-glacier-pow
philfort
2013-10-04 09:25:15