April 2, 2006, Granite Mountain
4/2/06
WA Snoqualmie Pass
2366
2
Headed out of Seattle at 0500. Left the trailhead (1800 ft) in darkness. Hit snow at about 2500. Was a pretty establish bootpack up the winter ridge before punching out of the trees.
As soon as we left the trees, the wind really started to howl (guessing about 20-30 mph based on the difficultly in skining) out of the east. We were pretty much sticking to the ridge (seem to be about a south/southwest orientation). Poor skinning, some breakable crust some not so breakable. With the wind, the googles came out for the uphill (not that common in my world). We called it good at 3500, since the wind was unpleasant and we expected the skiing to be as well.
For the downhill we traversed to the west and found crossloaded pockets of wind affected powder. At one point I kicked off a 2 meter wide slab with the deepest part of the crown ~25 cm. It ran only a few meters and did not propogate beyond the crossloaded pocket. This further enforced our decision to turn back, as even where the snow was good, it was not super safe. Red flags would have gone up if the slope were larger. Idle observations indicate 5-10 cm of winter snow (lighter) on top of a crust with saturated snow below.
Far from ideal skiing but a nice little outing, being home by 1030/1100.
Based on posting this morning, should have driven south.....
As soon as we left the trees, the wind really started to howl (guessing about 20-30 mph based on the difficultly in skining) out of the east. We were pretty much sticking to the ridge (seem to be about a south/southwest orientation). Poor skinning, some breakable crust some not so breakable. With the wind, the googles came out for the uphill (not that common in my world). We called it good at 3500, since the wind was unpleasant and we expected the skiing to be as well.
For the downhill we traversed to the west and found crossloaded pockets of wind affected powder. At one point I kicked off a 2 meter wide slab with the deepest part of the crown ~25 cm. It ran only a few meters and did not propogate beyond the crossloaded pocket. This further enforced our decision to turn back, as even where the snow was good, it was not super safe. Red flags would have gone up if the slope were larger. Idle observations indicate 5-10 cm of winter snow (lighter) on top of a crust with saturated snow below.
Far from ideal skiing but a nice little outing, being home by 1030/1100.
Based on posting this morning, should have driven south.....
But the real question of the day is "How fast were the transitions?" Had you known better you could have joined your elders for a more civilized turn-fest.
JD:
The hulking tattooed man from Seattle requested that I pass on the following sage advice regarding our elder-care day in the Tatoosh:
"Who gives a damn about vertical? The transitions are the foundation. If you don't have your transitions down, you'll never get the big numbers in the vertical. We had our transitions down. Thus we were able to push to 1700 vertical, where as otherwise, without the transitions, we'd have had less than half that, even maybe less still."
The hulking tattooed man from Seattle requested that I pass on the following sage advice regarding our elder-care day in the Tatoosh:
"Who gives a damn about vertical? The transitions are the foundation. If you don't have your transitions down, you'll never get the big numbers in the vertical. We had our transitions down. Thus we were able to push to 1700 vertical, where as otherwise, without the transitions, we'd have had less than half that, even maybe less still."
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