March 29, 2006, Lake Lillian, Snoqualmie Pass

My old leather/fabric joke tele boots are going to fall apart at some point soon, so I was happy to find a new pair for $80 to replace them. But...would the new boots provide the high level of performance which I had come to expect from the old boots? Only one way to find out, and this seemed like a good time because no partners materialized.

The new joke boots have a really nice little ring for attaching the gaiter (arrow), but don't (yet) have the precision hand stitching featured on the old boots (arrow):


I decided to do a little poking around for a trip I've been wanting to do for a while, namely Rampart Lakes via Lake Lillian. The sun was out and it felt like a real spring day when I pulled into the Mt. Margaret snopark, the only car there. A clear night had frozen everything solidly, and I had to add skins to my waxless skis when I started up through the woods by Rocky Run. Very solid snow under the trees, and skinable but only partially walkable in the open. When I reached the first logging road, 3500 feet, I pulled the skins and had a nice XC road ski up to the the end of the valley where the road switchbacks.

I followed the general route of the boot path from the road switchback, although I made a mistake in climbing too quickly at first and had to descend a little to get across a gully. In the open at around 4000 feet the snow was well refrozen and mostly walkable, and just softening on top. Clouds were quickly descending on the ridges above, though, and that was it for the sun (and most of the softening). I put skins back on for the steeper climb through the forest, which featured mostly softer old snow (up to 6 inches) with a thin layer of newer snow.

I never saw Lake Laura because I passed above it to the east (and it was starting to get foggy). From afar the short climb from Laura to Lillian looks improbable, but the boot path knows where to go (I hiked this last fall) and that is to the east of Pt. 4938. And suddenly there it was - Lake Lillian - or at least that's what I guessed because I could hardly make out a tree 50 feet away.

I found a little nook out of the wind and had some lunch, hoping for better visibility so that I could see the route from Lillian up to the ridge crest and the start of some nice touring toward Rampart Lakes. It never came. I figured I could XC ski around the perimeter of the lake without getting lost in the fog - it worked but was very weird, like floating in nothingness until the next tree came into view. It started to snow.

I gave up on the idea of climbing up above Lake Lillian, but thought I could try traversing south across west-facing slopes to the Twin Lakes basin, so I started gliding through alternating forest and open slopes. On some open slopes there had been avalanching, including one slide with large chunky debris 4-5 feet deep, but this must have been from Monday's nice weather because everything was pretty solid at this point. The triggers looked to be from cliffs above. I eventually got cliffed out in the fog and gave up on Twin Lakes, but got some nice turns on smooth open snow, firm but softened just enough, down to the bottom of the valley. The lower woods didn't seem too inviting for turns so I just took the snowmobile groomed road all the way down.

The new joke boots are nice! A little beefier than the old ones but seem to tour just as well. They should hike just as well. When I added the cables to the 3-pin bindings for the downhill I felt like I had a lot of control. I might just have to get another pair of these $80 boots.