March 02, 2014, Humpback Mountain
3/2/14
2979
1
Another weekend of dumping snow, another weekend of awesome skiing. Erik and I showed off some of the Cascades today to a new ski touring partner, Sam, with an adventure up Humpback Mountain. With all the new snow falling we thought that maybe we should stay West of the pass in case the pass was to close, if it was a shit show we wouldn't waste a lot of time driving up or across, and we thought the vert/distance was similar to our other option...Mt. Margaret. The aspect, SW, lined up with what NWAC was showing as non-wind loaded so that helped in our decision making process.
The approach feels like forever along that road, but good conversations help that out. The tour through the woods was awesome as I feel that I usually don't get to do many ski tours starting that low among some awesome trees. You're in the trees the entire way up to the ridge, which was different. The ridge was a little nerve racking at times, but it was a short stretch of the tour.
The track:
http://www.hillmap.com/m/ag1zfmhpbGxtYXAtaGRychULEghTYXZlZE1hcBiAgICAyYrTCww
The snow was 3-5" of fresh snow fall on top of a supporting crust that was a couple inches thick. It wasn't bonding too well so it made skinning at times difficult, but the snow wouldn't build up momentum and showed little signs of instability. Some sloughing, but nothing major. It skied really well...like awesome. It was interesting because we felt that it was snowing way harder at lower elevations and along the I-90 corridor than up higher on Humpback Mountain.
Once we were home we started thinking about how you could make some sweet traverses in or out of the mountain across the pass.
30 Months.
More Photos:
https://plus.google.com/photos/105664275472153507536/albums/5986391520824061057
The approach feels like forever along that road, but good conversations help that out. The tour through the woods was awesome as I feel that I usually don't get to do many ski tours starting that low among some awesome trees. You're in the trees the entire way up to the ridge, which was different. The ridge was a little nerve racking at times, but it was a short stretch of the tour.
The track:
http://www.hillmap.com/m/ag1zfmhpbGxtYXAtaGRychULEghTYXZlZE1hcBiAgICAyYrTCww
The snow was 3-5" of fresh snow fall on top of a supporting crust that was a couple inches thick. It wasn't bonding too well so it made skinning at times difficult, but the snow wouldn't build up momentum and showed little signs of instability. Some sloughing, but nothing major. It skied really well...like awesome. It was interesting because we felt that it was snowing way harder at lower elevations and along the I-90 corridor than up higher on Humpback Mountain.
Once we were home we started thinking about how you could make some sweet traverses in or out of the mountain across the pass.
30 Months.
More Photos:
https://plus.google.com/photos/105664275472153507536/albums/5986391520824061057
Way to score, gentlemen! Someday I hpe to try the east face approach, but not this year, I suppose. Those slopes look like they were quite fun, and the trees were pretty to tour up in.
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