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Feb 23 Rampart Ridge

2/23/14
WA Snoqualmie Pass
3677
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Posted by Jake the Brit on 2/24/14 12:26pm
Ari & I took a swing at the Rampart Ridge on Sunday.
We got to about 5300€™ on the south ridge before we were stopped by€¦.Ramparts.

Parking at Gold Creek with $42 worth of seasonal Sno-park paper, we dived right in, up through the woods, skirted a slide path, went up to the road at the top, turned north, stopped for a brew or two and went up the ridge as far as we could until we€™d have to tunnel through rime-trees or head onto the deadly wind-loaded east slope, or the deadly-deep-and steep-and tree-well-tastic  west slope. It was fun. We were heading for the peak directly south of Gold Lake.

We were unconcerned descending the ridge through the trees.
However, in open terrain large sloughs could be cut, dry-loose avalanches you could call them. The overnight snow (9-12€) + the 5€ that fell in the day. These dry-loose sloughs would be initiated & run on 30 deg + terrain.
It wasn€™t a major problem as we had plenty of trees, additionally we had room to escape to the flanks of the ski-cuts, but open steep slopes could clearly avalanche readily. And interestingly these dry-loose avis can clearly penetrate quite deep into tree cover.

Anyway, enough from Dr DOOOm. Here are some pics
Sounds like a fun day riding the Rampart edge of danger! ;)  Glad you knew where the edge was!

Nice. Did you run into any doghair/xmas tree farms toward the bottom of the old trees? Or did you just ski from there right back out into the open area that has a road switchback or two on the edge, below that gully that comes down from near the rampart that presumably blocked you?

Those trees are good steep cliff-dodging fun. Also the only place where I've witnessed a decent-depth pocket slab let loose in the trees, on a "considerable" hazard day during a storm event. It was about 10" deep and only ran down one knoll, skier triggered, a bunch of years ago.

We did this:
http://www.hillmap.com/m/ag1zfmhpbGxtYXAtaGRychULEghTYXZlZE1hcBiAgICAscnsCQw
or see the G-earth map.

Thanks for the heads up, I appreciate the insight & will establish which part of the slope you're referring.
I like that area as it feels like once you get up into the lakes you'd have a great high tour with killer views.

We were skiing in the steep trees just below the "Lake Laura" text in your image - down toward the Gold Creek drainage, parallel to the obvious slide gully/track (and some other lines parallel to that further west). Did you just follow your uptrack back to the car? I've wondered how that line was, but so many places to ski, so little time...

You're talking about this:
If you look carefully, the faint black blob is the summit cliff band.

It looked so deep on Sunday that it seemed a guy might just disappear and be swallowed by the tree wells. It was epic up there with the wind howling.

We did come down our uptrack, spooked as everyone is right now.
Honestly, if the snow was not sluffing quite so much we'd have I'd have murdered it, the bottom pitches are a stonking line.


Yeah, is credible as being roughly in the same area. That's a moody pic!

It's been some years, but I recall dropping in from a few spots on the ridge before travel further up toward the big cliff band became challenging, I'm guessing right around the high point on your map track. I further recall that the drop-in point wasn't quite as intense looking as the foreground in that photo, and that we launched from below an open area, as well as from above it on another run, as well as a ways further down the ridge to the west on yet another run (and then from way down by the saddle where the road comes up from the Rocky Run side for another much mellower run). Looks like you must have crossed some countours that were about as steep as our steeper entrances, and which appear just a bit more open on the aerial view (plus my memory looking up in that general area is of being able to see snowy ground between some fairly open big trees, versus the denser forest we were in). Now you've gone and gotten that itch going again...

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11682
feb-23-rampart-ridge
Jake the Brit
2014-02-24 20:26:50