Home > Trip Reports > Jan 4, 2006, snoq summit nordic and beyond

Jan 4, 2006, snoq summit nordic and beyond

1/4/06
WA Snoqualmie Pass
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Posted by dkoelle on 1/4/06 10:54pm
After a morning at work I got up to Silver Fir, took a lift trip up via my season nordic pass, and got going about 1:45.  Several inches on top of the last groom job.  Trees fully and fantastically loaded.  I cruised to the sign that said trail #15-Frog's legs, and headed up to Nordic pass.  This entre has a mellow beginning, being a little east of the #6 Rockdale loop.  There were some sketchy creek crossings but they went on snow bridges.  Cruised past Frog Lake.  There is a place where you need to climb up to the West to navigate a mini-gorge that is hard to cross.  I finally hit a blue trail marker at the "second meadow" creek crossing, but it was 3 PM and time to head back.  I think this is about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way from the trail system to Nordic Pass.  I saw a lot of tree-bomb activity due to the loaded trees and rising temps.  I saw only ghostly old ski tracks.  I retraced my tracks and reached the top of Silver Fir by 4:20 or so in fading light.  Then on to part 2...bought a downhill ticket and checked out the demo gear at Summit West...very nice.  A good 8 inches of moderately decent powder in the un-groomed areas.  Legs were too beat to really appeciate the nuances.
Thanks for the report from the forest. How would you characterize the overall coverage and travel-ability of the terrain in the old-growth between the XC trails and Nordic Pass? It sounds like the creek crossings could still use some filling in, but aside from those is everything pretty well covered now and the traveling good?

ya me wants to know too?
I'm of the opinion that we need at least 6-7 ' of snow to make that area really fun.

It was definitely a little low, but there was still enough snow to classify it as fun.  Depends on how deparate you are I guess.  The lower creek crossings were the step-across kind: snow on one side, snow on the other,piled up maybe 1 foot high on the banks, and a mellow creek fully visible 18 inches under your "ski bridge".  There were buried logs causing linear snow humps, but not too bad.  An upper creek, downstream of the place I was calling the second meadow creek crossing was definitely not looking too friendly for me as a solo skier, so I followed it uphill and did find a snow bridge up by the blue markers. The downhill (so to speak) was neat, the snow was deep enough to get swooping turns through the trees.  It was a LOT bonier last April I think when we toured through there.  I thought it needed another 2-3 feet to be really good, but people with patience and time for route finding should be OK now.

We've been spending quite a few days up around Nordic Pass since Christmas and it has been getting progressively better. I haven't been reporting because we're keeping it a secret.;)Mostly we've been skiing the trees below the radio tower and I think coverage is pretty good. I think last Fri and Sat were the two best days for snow quality so far but Mon 1-2 was pretty good too. We did a tour to the Summit of Mt Catherine Mon from Nordic Pass. Not knowing the way down the treed north steeps we pretty much skied the way we climbed. Not too bad, lots of new snow. Here's a photo of our pit just above Nordic Pass, starting up the ridge to Mt Catherine summit. Note the amount of snow on top of the pre Christmas rain crust. I'm estimating around 3 ft with 2-3 ft below that. Of course the more treed areas have less coverage. So with the reported 8 inches at Snoqualmie Tues night and the melt since Wed things are looking pretty good.


Thanks for the additional info, and nice snowpack profile in the photo. It sounds like the area is already in pretty good shape, and if we could just get a higher percentage of all this precip to be snow we'd be all set for the winter.

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jan-4-2006-snoq-summit-nordic-and-beyond
dkoelle
2006-01-05 06:54:41