June 20, 2005, Spray Park
6/20/05
4792
4
We left the car at 8:30 or so for the beginning of a long day. There were some snow-patches in Spray Park proper, but the continuous snow did not really start 'til about the elevation of Cateye Lake. The headwall loomed above; no tracks and a big cornice overhanging the central region. We went up the central snow draw and quickly realized this might have been a mistake and that perhap staying on the trail to the Spray/Seattle Park ridge and then hiking up on moraine stuff might have been faster. The snow looked new, spotless white, and had the consistency of bottomless mush. Our high point was just below the summit of Observation Rock, having ascended the short, steep angled slope from the Russell Glacier side. We looked down to the top of the headwall area. Then Dave realized he had a binding "issue". Specifically a Riva classic cable issue. Heroically, he managed to ski without that reassuring phenomenon of actually having his boot held to the ski. We did set off some huge surface loose hissers just re-tracing our up route; these stepped down in one or two places and entrained a lot of snow. A few gentle runs were shared using our working pair of fishscale skis. The lower angle stuff was sort of fine as there were not surface loose issues. June new snow is not uncommon; what is unusual is the access to this area in June I guess. The hike out seemed long with a look at the Falls and we didn't drive away until 7 or so.
I'm assuming you didn't go over knapsack pass.....did you?? That seems to be faster to me.......I hiked out via the falls route last year and it seemed to take forever also......nice walk.....but I think I'm going over the pass from now on. If you did take the pass....was there snow? Imagine it's all melted out by now....seeing as you didn't hit snow until cateye
Knapsack looked pretty darn dry from the Spray Park side. One tiny tiny snow patch just below the col. There were fingers of snow below Cateye that we trudged up. It seemed environmentally better to maximize walking on snow and minimize touching the bare meadows on the way up as the area gets heavy use, so we hopscotched between snow fingers going up. The ski down basically terminated soon below the lake, which we kept to our left as we passed it skiing down. There was less snow up there than on a normal Aug 1...waah
There was less snow up there than on a normal Aug 1...waah
Wow - do you mean just on the lower Flett?
The low snow was the most noticeable at the lowest elevations. Seems like usually the road opens in late July and at that time the snow fingers in Spray Park extend lower and more linked up than they were on Monday. Cateye seems more snowbound usually too, the previous times I have been there. Higher up, between Echo and Observation, and the Flett headwall, things seemed more average. No glide cracks on the edges of the Flett headwall, for example. This may reflect recent snows.
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