May 7-8,2017, Sahale arm and Baker Coleman Deming
5/7/17
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
3552
2
First post ever, here we go! :)
Caught the weather window on Sunday (May 7th) and went up to Cascade pass. The gate was closed at mile 20 (Eldorado), but it is snow free until the next gate (about 1.5 miles in). After another about .5 miles of steep walking, we were able to throw our skins on. Still lots of snow over there, probably will take a while to get the end of the road cleared out.
The warming from last week was apparent in the basin below cascade pass, so much debris! Everything was frozen over from the past day/night of cooler weather, so we opted for the winter route and skinned/booted lookers right on the mellower slope up to cascade pass instead of taking the summer trail . Once on Sahale arm, the views were gorgeous! Such a sweet place! We ended up just hanging out and taking in the views and then skiing down from the arm and back the way we came up, great spring turns on more sun affected slopes and icy ish fun fast turns on the not so sun affected slopes. Overall it didn't get too warm and we didn't see any wet slide activity that day. We did hear some small chunks falling off the Johannesburg hanging glacier.
Next up - Baker! On the drive to Heliotrope trailhead Sunday night, Baker was looking really majestic. The road is clear until about 1.5 miles to the trailhead. Enough snow to skin from the car. We were on the ridge around 8 am still with a view of the route/summit and watched a rain/snow cloud come in from behind. 2 hours later it socked in and started snowing. The icefall debris under Colfax is HUGE, I've never seen it that big - again, most likely the result of the warming we had last week. Crevasses are just starting to open up, we opted to rope up right after crossing the icefall debris as the visibility was pretty bad. We hung out right below the ridge of the Roman wall at about 9k for an hour or so to see if the cloud would clear. No luck! Reward: skiing in a ping pong ball until about 7k, oh so fun. Funny video to give you an idea: https://www.instagram.com/p/BT2bNIuByUT/ . The snow was great though - skied the winter route out. No shenanigans as far as creek crossings go yet.
Overall, great time in the mountains. Can't wait for real spring!
Some photos here.
Caught the weather window on Sunday (May 7th) and went up to Cascade pass. The gate was closed at mile 20 (Eldorado), but it is snow free until the next gate (about 1.5 miles in). After another about .5 miles of steep walking, we were able to throw our skins on. Still lots of snow over there, probably will take a while to get the end of the road cleared out.
The warming from last week was apparent in the basin below cascade pass, so much debris! Everything was frozen over from the past day/night of cooler weather, so we opted for the winter route and skinned/booted lookers right on the mellower slope up to cascade pass instead of taking the summer trail . Once on Sahale arm, the views were gorgeous! Such a sweet place! We ended up just hanging out and taking in the views and then skiing down from the arm and back the way we came up, great spring turns on more sun affected slopes and icy ish fun fast turns on the not so sun affected slopes. Overall it didn't get too warm and we didn't see any wet slide activity that day. We did hear some small chunks falling off the Johannesburg hanging glacier.
Next up - Baker! On the drive to Heliotrope trailhead Sunday night, Baker was looking really majestic. The road is clear until about 1.5 miles to the trailhead. Enough snow to skin from the car. We were on the ridge around 8 am still with a view of the route/summit and watched a rain/snow cloud come in from behind. 2 hours later it socked in and started snowing. The icefall debris under Colfax is HUGE, I've never seen it that big - again, most likely the result of the warming we had last week. Crevasses are just starting to open up, we opted to rope up right after crossing the icefall debris as the visibility was pretty bad. We hung out right below the ridge of the Roman wall at about 9k for an hour or so to see if the cloud would clear. No luck! Reward: skiing in a ping pong ball until about 7k, oh so fun. Funny video to give you an idea: https://www.instagram.com/p/BT2bNIuByUT/ . The snow was great though - skied the winter route out. No shenanigans as far as creek crossings go yet.
Overall, great time in the mountains. Can't wait for real spring!
Some photos here.
Awesome. Hope the boots worked out OK.
Thanks for the report Julia!
Fun skiing with you.
Fun skiing with you.
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