Home > Trip Reports > February 2, 2014, - Phantom

February 2, 2014, - Phantom

2/2/14
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Posted by ErikT on 2/2/14 7:21am
Beautiful day out for some early turns before ducking back into town for the event. We found generally stable powder on the Phantom and the upper slopes. Did a few hasty pits and got a fracture about a foot down on 5th shoulder strike... on a density change... some stiff stuff on top. No hoar found, and the interface with the old high pressure crust seemed ok. The block didn't want to budge after coming loose, and all other tests were fairly benign.

more pictures here


Stability wise, things were similar to what we'd seen on Saturday at the Kendall stumps and trees. No obvious signs of instability, and good light density pow. We skied mainly S slopes, but some N-NW trees in the old growth.

Still some good snow in the Kendall Stump area - about 8-12" of fresh on top of a solid base. We only skied fairly wooded S slopes and saw no instability (were planning to dig a pit for curiosity but ran out of time).
Coverage is still a whole different story - was reasonable up high but once we dropped to about 3800', the sliding alder seemed to have been everywhere, and the fallen logs in the old(er) growth forest posed a challenge as well.
All in all, a fun short day, especially once we punched out of the clouds at about 4200'.

ErikT,
we were planning on Phantom on Saturday but bailed to the source lake area after looking at the low coverage.  How was the it in the low trees around the waterfall? From Snow Lake ridge I could tell it was killer above 4K, but I did not want to subject my partner to the horrors I worried may exist at lower elevations.

I skied it yesterday and the snow was great top to bottom; no signs of instability. I went to the first "hairpin" in the snow lake trail before heading up and managed to keep my skis on the entire time. It was still scrappy and I'm sure it didn't save any time, but going down that way was better than it would have been closer to the falls.

Interesting... I've only been up there twice, and the idea of being able to go that far up the summer trail and cutting back over is appealing... We went right directly under the (fairly dry and alder choked) falls. Required a short section of booting, then steep skinning before it laid back a bit. Skintrack put in the day prior went up the Phantom, which looked like less hassle, but feels a bit more exposed than our tree schwack further up valley.

Was a bit of survival skiing to get out as we went around the waterfall...

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february-2-2014-phantom
ErikT
2014-02-02 15:21:50