April 28, 2018, Hawkins Mountain, dust on mush

Early morning downpour in Seattle was not greatly inspiring, but thinking of all the other times we wimped out this year, we adjusted plans and found a decent time a bit east of the crest.

The road is driveable to nearly Camp Creek, where longer snow patches start (lots of short patches before that). From there, we traveled right up to the long easy ridge, skis on for it all except for a ~800vf section of the steeper forest which was pretty well melted out. Once on the open ridge, snow was falling, and the upper mountain was hidden. Deep mush was the snow of the day for the most part -- smooth and predictable, but easy to kick into slow-moving slides when steep enough. Many gullies were filled with chunky debris from recent days. But once we ventured higher into the cloud (above 6000ft), ski conditions improved greatly -- firmer base with only shallow mush. Fun times, typical April I guess.

(Hooray for larger photo limits!)