Feb 14, 2015, Yodelin

Despite knowing better (I've been staying at a cabin in the Yodelin subdivision for the past week) we decided to give touring the old Yodelin ski area a shot.

The difficulty in finding any sort of route out of the parking lot should have been our first clue to give up, but we refused to be so easily thwarted and bootpacked / postholled up until we hit the first cat track / fire road. Coverage was just high enough so that you could skin, which is unfortunate as otherwise we would have turned back and saved ourselves the agony of trying to navigate all the slide alder.

We eventually reached the steep "pitch" just under the open field and again bootpacked / front pointed up above it. Greeted by some more skinnable snow we were feeling more optimistic about the rest but really the snow never got above what might be called "terrible".

Had lunch at around 4800ft near what I think is the old ski lift foundation. View was nice but it started raining, so we started picking our way down. As miserable as the up was, the down was worse, barely covered hardback survival skiing punctuated with over the handlebar flips due to getting caught in slide alder.

It is always nice getting out, but ya, that wasn't much fun. Need at least a few more feet to make Yodelin viable again.

We've been doing a half dozen runs at Stevens every day for kicks and it is impressive what they are doing with the snow they have. Yesterday was mostly ice, but on the warmer days there's enough loose to make it worth the 5 minute drive. They seem to be losing about an inch a day though, so if they don't get any new in the next week or so I don't see them remaining open much longer.