January 3, 2016, W. Face of Silver Peak

Ed, Dave, Ryan and myself originally planned to summit Humpback Mountain. However, once we reached the flats near Humpback Creek, about 1.5 miles in from Annette Lake Trail-head, we were hammered by both southerly and easterly gusts of great strength. We also noted how those winds had made the surface of the snow very "scritchy", a newly-minted descriptive snow term. Dave, with his excellent cross-valley vision, spied some very nice open spaces below the 5,100 foot N. shoulder of Silver Peak, and asked if we agreed that there might be softer snow there. We found a very nice snow-bridge across the creek right at the 3,00 foot line, and proceeded to go up and up and up. Though there was some crust to the snow as we ascended, it didn't seem too massive, and the snow itself kept getting softer as we got near our stopping point. At 4,725 feet (we were only 400 feet below the ridge shoulder, but conditions didn't warrant a higher ascent...), we decided to doff skins and proceed downward. WOW! What a nice ski run!! Really nice snow for the first 1,000 feet, and then a thin yet manageable breakable crust until just 200 feet above the creek. We re-crossed the creek, skinned up about 300 feet, and ten traversed to the old Milwaukee RR snow shed, where we then followed the RR grade about 1/2 mile to just above the Annette r. parking lot. Amazingly, the small trees in that part of the lower forest are far enough apart to ski through w/o a schwack, and made getting back to the road to the car simple. New tour partners, and an area that isn't easy to ski unless there is LOTS of snow below Snoqualmie Pass. Looking forward to getting up in there again sometime soon. Hoping Dave or Ryan have photos/video to tag onto this report.