June 13 - Pinnacle Pond Slushcup

A simple email, a lot of pent up ski desire and beautiful weather was the recipe for a summer ski party yesterday in the Tatoosh.  The Pinnacle Pond, though maybe a week or two away from being really ripe for water skiing, offered plety of  slush and meltwater pockets to quench our appetite for fun. 

We met at Reflection Lake.  There was some strong debate, almost all about the Paradise, the Muir, the Chutes, etc.  No one was impressed with the amount of snow showing in the Tatoosh.  One comment was "Let's not try to polish a turd.  If we're gonna hike, let's do it, knowing the skiing is gonna be crud."We had about ten volleys of "I don't care, what do YOU want to do"...ping ponged back and forth. At one point the skis were on the packs.  Then they were back in the car.  But when Telemack and Chris Mosetick arrived, after eyeballing the Tatoosh from the Paradise parking lot, the decision ws quickly locked in.  It also helped that it was a 1 hour jaunt, versus a several hour grunt.

The hike up and the views were fabulous, as always, but the power and beauty was multiplied by seeing it all new through my San Diego Cousins' eyes, hiking with us.  The last bit of scrambling up to the Pinnacle-Castle saddle, on loose, scratchy scree got everybody's attention.  I had heard a description of the Muir from Friday as "mid sized sun cup runnel mush garbage", but we were all surprised to see the Pinnacle snow looked very smooth compared to that description.  Everyone was pleasantly surprised.  And even though we only had 300 ft runs, we did enough laps to scratch all the main ski itches.

The cast, in no particular order:  Moscawulf, Pavel, Bryan (r1de), Telemack, Lisa, Mosetick, Ben, Brian R, Dave, Andy, me and my two young cousins Hanna and Giana.

Here's a video put together by Bryan (r1de)