Home > Trip Reports > April 27, 2015, Fortune and South Ingalls

April 27, 2015, Fortune and South Ingalls

4/27/15
WA Cascades East Slopes Central
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Posted by radka on 4/27/15 2:57pm
Lowell's copy cats here!  ;D We had an idea to ski Fortune which we had never done, and maybe check out S Ingalls, while we're at it, and then we realized that Lowell and his party just did a very similar trip last week. I am sure we had very different conditions, though, with 1-3'' of fresh, soft snow.

On Saturday, we went to E WA and hiked around Umatilla Rock and then on top of Steamboat Rock. We highly recommend that area for any hikers out here - it was really stunning.

We arrived at Ingalls trailhead a little before midnight and parked in the far corner of the parking lot. It was nice sleeping in the car until a car arrived and of all the places in the vacant parking lot, parked right next to our steamed up car. Has nobody watched the Titanic movie???  ??? It was time to get up anyway so off we went.

We followed boottrack to the top of Fortune where we caught up with Randy O and his party. We skied down to Headlight Basin on soft, fresh snow. It was really nice.



Adding this picture for anybody interested in snow conditions on Stuart. Doesn't look very good:


Next, we headed up to check out South Ingalls.



We left skis at a rock outcropping and booted the remaining 300 ft to the summit. Chris booting up the final slope:



Summit was awesome and Rainier peeked out.





Skiing was very enjoyable.

http://radkaandchris.smugmug.com/Skiing/2015/Fortune-Pk-and-South-Ingalls-Apr/i-Mng8gqS/0/XL/RAD_1392-Edit-XL.jpg" />

Chris took a nice picture of me skiing:


We skinned up back to to the ridge leading to Fortune and skied the S slope. That part was really, really nice and with wonderful corn.

http://radkaandchris.smugmug.com/Skiing/2015/Fortune-Pk-and-South-Ingalls-Apr/i-8n6LKbw/0/XL/RAD_1475-XL.jpg" />

We skied till we hit dirt and then just bushwhacked down to the trail. The shwacking was very moderate and not too bad.

April has been awesome!

More pics here: http://radkaandchris.smugmug.com/Skiing/2015/Fortune-Pk-and-South-Ingalls-Apr
Nice -- what was your route for accessing Fortune


Esmeralda Trial, up, down, up, down Ingalls---- got it!  Thanks

Actually that's reversed.  Ingalls Pass trail up and Esmeralda down.  We split off the trail proper to Ingalls Pass ~500' below it and traversed N-NW towards Fortune.  Once you gain the E Ridge of Fortune just past Lake Camp Fire Girls, it's not quite continuously skinnable since there are a few places to scramble.  On descent, there's about 1500' of shwacking before you reach the Esmeralda trail proper.

Ha!  Need those arrow thingies.    Thanks --- and nice photos BTW

I might need to jump on board this train.

How was the road for low clearance/2WD vehicles?

The road is negotiable for low clearance vehicles.  There are lots of big pot holes on the road so take it slow and drive around them.  Only the last 9-10 miles are dirt.

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april-27-2015-fortune-and-south-ingalls
radka
2015-04-27 21:57:02