Home > Trip Reports > December 3, 2014, Inspection of Colfax

December 3, 2014, Inspection of Colfax

12/3/14
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
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Posted by runningclouds on 12/4/14 8:47am
We took advantage of the last day of sunshine (and cold temperatures) to ski Colfax but turned around about 1hr from the summit. Beautiful day for views and skinning, not so much for skiing. Most of the skiing involved wind crust of variable thickness, the best run was in the shadow of N face of Colfax, almost powder; sweet but short.

Coleman Glacier has good coverage, most of the small to medium crevasses have been filled or covered, the large ones are filling up. There is beautiful ice arch in the large crevasse below Colfax. We had glacier gear and a rope but did not rope up.

The Heliotrope trail has numerous sections of water ice. The creeks are mostly frozen over and easily crossed. We walked up without crampons but put them on for the descent which was a lot faster than finding detours off or on the side of the trail.

The road is drivable all the way to trailhead, the snow has been compressed to a thin layer with slippery sections.

Few pictures including Google Earth map here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/runningclouds/sets


The arch and trail photos are impressive. Thanks!

Is that detail forecast from mountain-forecast.com or snow-forecast.com at the baker ski area?

Nice pictures! That's a NOAA forecast bwalt.

Im talking about the next slide, This one:
Forecast Pic

But looking at the comments of the picture I now see its snow forecast.  The OP must pay extra or have a trick to get the detailed forecast.

Thank you Charlie. This trail is not my favourite but this time there were ice wonders on and off trail all the way up.

Thank you natefred.

bwalt822: that is the 2 day detailed view from snow-forecast.com (subscription only). I am not an expert but it is my understanding the snow-forecast.com site uses the European world weather modelling data. When the NOAA and snow-forecast agree I have a higher confidence.


Beautiful pictures, as always.

Thanks ps44. I have just added few more pictures.

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december-3-2014-inspection-of-colfax
runningclouds
2014-12-04 16:47:54