January 21-22, 2014, Rogers Pass, Ross+Ursus Major

Toured up the SE bowl on a subpeak of Mt. Ross on the 21st. Snow was excellent all the way down to valley floor due to the sun being hidden by overcast skies. No pictures sadly of that day as no one had a camera.

Today we attempted to go for the SE couloir off Ursus Major. We encountered around 4-6cm of new snow in the alpine. The forecast was predicting flurries turning to partly cloudy skies at noon. Unfortunately the sky went blue bird around 11:30. Within about an hour large wet slides started coming off the west face of Peak 8812. At that point we backed off our objective. We put in some heli ski wiggles down the bowl and dropped down into Cougar Creek. Took the east facing side of the drainage to avoid getting dumped on by Cheops. Everything was smooth sailing until we let ourselves get sucked into cougar creek just before the highway. That made for a pretty spicy exit, sending the creek direct is not recommended. Overall a pretty nice day.