Jan 5, 2014, Mt. Shuksan, White Salmon misfire

Itching to take advantage of the (relatively speaking) massive dump of snow late last week (about a foot or so) and the gorgeous weather last weekend, my friend Dave and I thought we would attempt to ski Shuksan, which had been in the back of our minds since last season. I guess the lack of any TRs on this site or others from this season should have been a warning that it might not be such an easy task given the small snowpack but this red flag went unnoticed. We drove up late saturday night having heard something about the White Salmon lodge parking lot being closed after 5. Hoping this was just a rumor, we arrived to find that it was not. After asking a man taking pictures in the dark whether he knew a place to park and receiving no good answers, we decided to park in a little pull-off on the side of the road. We got a few hours of sleep and started "climbing" around 5. This got off to an ominous start as my Duke's had frozen in the lock position and I could not, for the life of me, get them into touring mode. I eventually walked over to the garage where they keep the cats, which was fortunately unlocked. After no one answered my knock, I walked in and poured some warm moldy mop water on my bindings until I got them to free up. I'm not sure how many diseases I contracted that day after pouring that water over my hands but my guess is that it is more than a few. As I was leaving someone finally showed up and looked at me blankly as I tried to explain what I was doing in their garage. He was friendly enough and had no problem with it, so I left and we finally started our trek. The initial descent into the WS drainage was where sh*t really hit the fan. After a couple of fun steep turns in sugary snow, we were soon booting through mangled overgrown bushes and forests - I think we accidentally made our way out of the clearcut in which we had been advised to descend. An hour and a half later we reached the bottom as the sun was rising. There were some beautiful sunrise views but also some views of the continuing heinous approach in front of us. 3 hours later, after hacking our way through more trees and shrubs that we had hoped would have been buried, we had yet to reach the White Salmon glacier. 4.5 hours after we began our day, our high point was ~400 ft above our starting elevation. It got so bad that Dave, against the advice of TLC, went chasing waterfalls in an attempt to find easier climbing (see pic). Eventually, having known for awhile that we wouldn't have nearly enough time to summit, we bailed, skinned up to the ski area BC, and skied down. We'll call this a good scouting mission for when we *actually* decide to ski Shuk. Hopefully this week's storms will fill the approach in a bit.