April 5, 2006, Crooked Couloir, Snoqualmie Mt.

We met at the Alpental parking lot on Wednesday, but with the ski area on its end-of-season wind-down schedule the easy access backcountry option was out . . . decided to give the Crooked Couloir a try, and headed up through the trees in sloppy corn mush. Above about 5,000 ft. the firm crust with an inch of soft corn made the grip tenuous, but a sideways kick with each step did the trick and the ski crampons (which I actually remembered to bring) stayed in the pack.

Cornices at the top of Snoqualmie Mt. are substantial; we ate a bit and poked around at a few potential entry points before deciding on the top one, which required about a 6-8 ft. drop depending on your angle - the lower cornice at the notch looked like it might be a little less of a commitment.

Unfortunately the snow had been rained on and frozen a couple of times; there was the sort of thin crust that made a zipping sound as your boots sliced through it, so long GS turns with evenly weighted skis were the order of the moment.

The narrow section of the Crooked is almost completely filled in - even the part with the rock in the middle has a clear ten-foot wide path around it. Unfortunately there is a bunch of soft-frozen debris from the constriction to the runout apron.

We looked up at the Slot on the way out, which seemed to be heavily cratered with pinwheel divots as far up as we could see.

Skinned up to the NW notch without having to resort to booting  :), then decided on the Phantom for the run back to the cars.

Snow conditions on the Phantom? 60 degree weather, not yet corn but long since powder . . . you guessed it, wet corn chowder, very deep and quite slow. Figure 11 backseat technique proved the most effective.



We set off several sizeable slides on the way down, making it seem prudent to ski the ridges in the middle section, then did multiple ski cuts over the waterfall, which took down about the top foot of snow. About halfway down, seeing nothing but rotten snow underfoot and hearing the sound of large volumes of running water, we were worried about the whole snowpack going, but got down safely with a little speed and well-timed hopping.