3/13/14, The Crooked Snoqualmie Mtn

Kenji and I decided that we better get out and ski while the weather was nice.

The day started out with high clouds and diffused sunlight and then turned to clear skies in the afternoon. Skinning from the Alpental parking lot up the Phantom was quite firm in the open and still soft in the trees. I forgot my ski crampons so I stayed in the trees most of the way up and Kenji was in the open with his crampons.

From the summit we dropped down to the col just east of the true summit. The snow in the north facing cirque was OK. About 4" of powder with a few imbedded crust on top of a solid rain crust at the top which transitioned to 10" of powder in the bottom of the basin. Continuing down the Crooked the snow was variable, 6" of powder, wind crust, boiler plate, but mostly powder which was nice! Unless, you got to far skier right then there was a sun crust. Anyway, once we got to the choke point there didn't look like a safe way through. There is a large rock in the middle which I skied to. Down the right side was openings in the snow and rocks sticking out, down the left side a very narrow slot, and I couldn't see what was below that. No thanks! So back up the couloir we go!

Skiing down the south east side was pretty nice spring like conditions. Fun stuff! Back over to the Phantom and the snow was pretty soft and we were punching through to our boot tops.

Saw no signs of instability and no recent avalanches on Snoqualmie mtn. There was a deep slab avalanche on the east side of Bryant probably happened during the rain event.

Now we are all hoping Kenji will post some of his beautiful photos here: