December 7, 2005, Lundin Peak

Kevin, Frank and I pulled into the small parking strip just north of the Sahale Lodge today around 9:10, and headed up the trail just shy of 9:30 - it was cold (low 20's) and breezy and we had to move pretty fast to warm up. There was a beautiful freeway of a skintrack left from the weekend that went about halfway up the mountain, the Commonwealth Basin creek crossings we had feared in early season were no problem, and the sun came out as we started up the final steep section of Lundin Peak.

The snow had "set up" a bit since the blower pow days of the weekend, but there was still about 12-14" of fresh soft stuff . . . plenty of potential for postholing if you stepped off your skis onto the skin track (ie. skin removal). Closer to the top the snow was substantially wind affected and even denser, the top 500' or so were quite thin (lots of barely covered rocks) and had about a 1/2" breakable crust.

The ski was really fun after the first ten turns on rock and crust - not quite powder, but good turns. Getting out required putting the skins on briefly, and I made the mistake of submerging my skis on one of the creek crossings, which immediately froze up and had to be whacked with poles, etc. Trip took approximately 5 hours car to car.

map (waypoints 1-7 are on Rainier, BTW!)

video of Kevin working his way through the rocks and crust at the top