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March 28-30 Cannon Summit

3/28/14
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Posted by Jake the Brit on 3/31/14 3:06pm
El Victor & I weathered the weather and had a few go-home moments.
However, because we had no real plan except a blunt refusal to hack the Start Lake trail, and we had SpeedyGonCamping; the new 10oz ubermegadzupaMid, we were free.

Starting late on Friday, we bazoomed up the old logging road from the Stuart lake trailhead & headed uphill after the washout. We contracted the universal fear, this time about windslab, about 6300€™, so we camped and continued up in the AM by which time the evil bar-steward winds on the Cannon ridge had subsided.

We were originally heading for Little Annapurna. For no good reason. But since now time was short we had decided to summit Cannon. For no good reason. We were already most of the way up the ridge to Coney Lake, and it looked good on the map.
There are however three good reasons to go to Coney Lake, maybe four, though we bluntly refused to ski them, but I€™m not going to tell you why and I€™m not going to tell you why I€™m not going to tell you why because you know!
We could not assess the snow, since it was so hard Victors shovel bounced off it, so we downclimbed a bit and skied the rest, down to Coney Lake at the head of Rat Creek, which should be the new black since it€™s so cool.

To take a swing at Cannon we€™d decided to go along the ridge between pt 8287 & Cannon, the Rat-Shield ridge, however the evil Bar-Steward winds were particularly evil on Saturday PM, I reckon about 60 or 70 mph, so we went back to pt 8278; the Rat-Shield hotel and dug a cave. Then we went and skied some fluff downwards to Shield lake, ate some grub and shivered.

On Sunday, the day of action, we went back to the ridge and despite the wind got the point where a guy needed a rope, so we turned around.
El Victor however found a way, a scary way down the south side of the ridge, we steamed up the Arctic Plateau and summated Cannon, top job.
The snow in the Enchantments plateau, on east facing aspects was heavenly, so we did a bit, toured through the plateau back to our yesterdays tracks, packed up back to the cave, bumped down the Rat-Shield ridge, over the Rat-Mountaineer ridge and had a powder feast as we munched down 4000€™ of laughs, and skied right into the damned parking lot. Everything was stable. Superbueno!
http://jakeevans.smugmug.com/Washington/Cannon-summit/38189415_Sncp5X
http://www.hillmap.com/m/ag1zfmhpbGxtYXAtaGRychULEghTYXZlZE1hcBiAgICAzf7ECgw
Ooops, forgot....
Conditions we found: Crust everywhere, under between 1-12" of fresh, crampons essential. Snow had not formed large cohesive slabs of Sunday. Slight propagation of dry-loose slabs was frequent near ridges with 1-6" slabs, and possible to make it slide if you really hit it, but if a guy could get a slide going it would not run far at all. Deep snow has accumulated at 5000' and above. We could not find evidence of dangerous wind-slab loading despite very high winds. Slabs observed at about 8000'. I'm sure Victor will chime in.
Supeaduperbueno!

We also found the Jan rain crust as we dug the snowcave; hard like a vein of rock, about 12' down. Seemed benign & bonded. Damned hard too.

Thanks for the report.  Some of that sounded really fun!

Europe invades the Eastside again.  Nice going you two!  It's about time we get a report from the alpine East of the crest.  Thanks for posting Jake! Top dollar indeed!

  Is the Frenchman going to post some photos too?  Looking forward to them.  Coney lake is such a scenic area. 

I'm including your stunning photo of Mt. Cashmere if you don't mind.  And the classic post-tour wasted photo.  Too classic not to share!

Adding some illustration to the words...

And a few more...

Last one...

And if you want more, here they are :

http://www.victormesny.com/#!recent-adventures

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march-28-30-cannon-summit
Jake the Brit
2014-03-31 22:06:23