January 8, 2006, Skyline ridge
1/8/06
WA Stevens Pass
2372
2
Great day. It was fairly quiet, for a pretty popular area.
Headed up to higher elevation, to hopefully avoid what I anticipated would be wet snow in snoqualmie pass. Based on the TRs I've read, it looks like we made a good choice.
Snow above 4500 feet or so was quite good, in the open. We skinned up to Skyline lake, then dropped off the ridge down what appeared to be a stream bed or talus slope. The snow was pretty deep, and heavy.
We skinned up Skyline ridge, where we found wind-affected powder. Up on top of the ridge, we met a couple of tele skiers we had seen earlier in the day. We dug a pit, and found a bomber snowpack (several layers of well bonded wet snow), topped off with about 3 inches of dry slab snow. There was an ice layer about 3/4 inches thick 18-24 inches down. The wind slab was extremely poorly bonded, breaking off several times while I was trying to isolate a column for a tap test. We decided to avoid the large open slope below us, and followed the tele skiers tracks down the ridge and through the trees.
The snow up top was great, pretty light, and tons of fun. The snow in the trees was a refrozen, tree bombed mess, dusted with the lightest of fresh snow. What I would call Death Cookies back when I was an east coast skier...
The skin back up to the lake was eventful. Snow between tree clumps was great. Deep, but easy to skin up. Snow in the trees was a frozen mess topped with just enough new snow to keep your edges sliding out. We'd reach a spot where skinning up was impossible, bootpack for a half dozen steps, then hit a pocket of soft snow. Somehow, we missed the slope we took down until the very end of the climb, which would have made for a more pleasant uptrack.
The decent from the lake was pretty good. We cut as many switch backs as we could, and found some nice snow on top of the tracked up ruts that had frozen in. Got back to the parking lot just before dusk.
A couple of the better pics:
Headed up to higher elevation, to hopefully avoid what I anticipated would be wet snow in snoqualmie pass. Based on the TRs I've read, it looks like we made a good choice.
Snow above 4500 feet or so was quite good, in the open. We skinned up to Skyline lake, then dropped off the ridge down what appeared to be a stream bed or talus slope. The snow was pretty deep, and heavy.
We skinned up Skyline ridge, where we found wind-affected powder. Up on top of the ridge, we met a couple of tele skiers we had seen earlier in the day. We dug a pit, and found a bomber snowpack (several layers of well bonded wet snow), topped off with about 3 inches of dry slab snow. There was an ice layer about 3/4 inches thick 18-24 inches down. The wind slab was extremely poorly bonded, breaking off several times while I was trying to isolate a column for a tap test. We decided to avoid the large open slope below us, and followed the tele skiers tracks down the ridge and through the trees.
The snow up top was great, pretty light, and tons of fun. The snow in the trees was a refrozen, tree bombed mess, dusted with the lightest of fresh snow. What I would call Death Cookies back when I was an east coast skier...
The skin back up to the lake was eventful. Snow between tree clumps was great. Deep, but easy to skin up. Snow in the trees was a frozen mess topped with just enough new snow to keep your edges sliding out. We'd reach a spot where skinning up was impossible, bootpack for a half dozen steps, then hit a pocket of soft snow. Somehow, we missed the slope we took down until the very end of the climb, which would have made for a more pleasant uptrack.
The decent from the lake was pretty good. We cut as many switch backs as we could, and found some nice snow on top of the tracked up ruts that had frozen in. Got back to the parking lot just before dusk.
A couple of the better pics:
Thanks for the report and links to those nice photos. Making the links be text of your own choice is one of those little secrets...but here's how to do it (don't know why it's not well documented in the official forum help, but it is described here)
The easiest way to do this is to first click the button for the URL YABBC tag, which puts in:
Now, right after the first "url" insert an equals sign followed by your URL. Then, between the opening and closing tags put in the desired text. Like this:
The displayed result:
Check out this kewl web site!
The easiest way to do this is to first click the button for the URL YABBC tag, which puts in:
[url">
Now, right after the first "url" insert an equals sign followed by your URL. Then, between the opening and closing tags put in the desired text. Like this:
Check out this kewl web site!
The displayed result:
Check out this kewl web site!
Fixed the links, much more better now.
Thanks, Charles
Thanks, Charles
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