April 7, 2006, Rampart Ridge to Alta Mtn (almost)

I tried to do this trip last week but got fogged out at Lake Lillian. Yesterday's forecast suggested a nice spring day for today, so I was a little disappointed at this morning's murky overcast, but as it turned out the limited sun kept the snow in much better shape that it would have otherwise been. I don't think I would have made it as far if it had been a sunny day.

I just read today's NWAC avalanche forecast, and it was very accurate. Everything had frozen overnight. Most open areas had a 2-4 inch crust, though it was not bombproof (skinnable, not walkable, and fairly easily punched through with a pole); under the crust was generally from 12-24 inches of mush. The exceptions were north facing slopes (between 5000 and 5600 feet), which had just a few inches over solidness, and in the forest (between 3800 and 4800 feet), where the snow was nicely consolidated. A lot of debris had been shed from cliffs earlier in the week, including some giant (5-6 foot diameter) pinwheels sitting at the bottom of the north slopes near Rampart Lakes, but nothing was sliding today.

With the overcast and only infrequent hazy sun, the snow softened slowly, which was a good thing. W to SE facing slopes eventually did thaw to varying degrees, resulting in weak breakable crust over mush to just plain mush. Along the ridge crests the snow generally stayed good regardless of aspect due to the strong east winds. The best turns were on the way back: open E slopes between Rampart Lakes and Lake Lillian, and then W-facing forested slopes from Lake Lillian down to the logging road.

Here's the route I took: from Gold Creek snowmobile snopark (2500 feet), frontage road then up through the forest ~1000 feet to logging road. XC skied that up Rocky Run to the Wilderness boundary, then skinned up through forest/glades to Lake Lillian. Up a little slot (booted last part) to the ridge above the lake (~5100 feet) , then pulled the skins and toured up to a saddle (~5600 feet) overlooking Rampart Lakes. Skied down the north slopes to Rampart Lakes, then toured N through them and along the ridge crest above Rachel Lake. Followed the ascending ridge toward Alta Mountain until it got too steep, then continued N on the E side of the ridge. Stopped at the 5700 foot saddle just east of Alta Mountain's summit, looking right at Chickamin Peak and down to the head of Gold Creek valley. The last ~400 feet to the top of Alta looked reasonable, but I would have had to boot it, and the ski down would not have been good, so I skipped it (plus, I had a long way to go back). Returned same route except I skipped the unpleasant woods ski returning to the frontage road and instead took the logging road all the way down. This was actually very nice as it had been snomo groomed and was fast. TOPO says 15 miles and 4700 vf. I used waxless skis, skins, 3-pins with detachable cables (used only on the section back to Rocky Run), and my new leather/fabric joke tele boots. The setup worked great and is really lightweight.