April 4-6, 2006, Colchuck Lake, Colchuck Col

Justin C. and I went to Colchuck for our annual trip on his Spring break from teaching.
Quick info:
Mountaineer Creek road is still gated at the Icicle.  It is hike/ski for the first 1.5 miles.  Solid snow for the next 3 miles to the TH from there.  Four feet at the TH.  Followed a well defined/packed trail to the Colchuck junction.  Then followed TeleRoss' skin track to the lake.  Trailbridges might get interesting as they melt down to the handrail height.
Camped at the lake.
Approach to the col was on about 12 inches or so of newer snow, a light 3" on top of a softer melt/freeze crust, then 8" of dried out powder underneath.  Wanted to ski from the top of Colchuck Peak.  But the east slope out of the col was frozen solid and steep enough with enough exposed rock below to keep us from attempting.  High clouds kept the sun from softening the icy crust, longer than we could wait it out, so we turned back after boot packing up the ridge a couple hundred vertical feet.
The run down from the col was mixed.  The first 1500 vertical feet was light snow, a bit challenging through the soft melt/freeze crust, but fast and fun.  Then the last 1000 feet back to the lake had warmed above freezing.  We were sinking in deep and sending huge pinwheel debris, but it was quite turnable.
The trip out the next day was tough.  A 3/4 inch breakable crust on top of 8" of sugar from the lake to Mountaineer Creek.  We got impatient of trying to wait out the day long enough to thaw the shady slope below the lake.  By mid afternoon it probably would have just been heavy without a crust.  We skied the summer trail out from the Stuart Lk. junction with skins on because it would have been very fast in the trench with full packs.  There are also numerous short uphills on the trail.
All in all a good time for our annual spring skicamping trip.  And a good choice knowing that there were reports of 9" of new in the east Cascades from the weekend.  Any sun exposed slopes over 40 degrees were sluffing all the new snow in heavy wet slides each afternoon, propagated from rockfaces or tree drip.  Fun to hear and watch from camp.
Oh yeah, we met teleRoss on his way out and couldn't believe what he had done on Dragontail.  Awesome line and unbelievable endurance to get in and out of there all the way from the Icicle.