April 22, 2006, Scottish Lakes / Big Chiwaukum

My wife and I spent Friday and Saturday nights at Scottish Lakes.  We skinned up McCue Ridge on Friday to scout Saturday's route but the visibility did not allow a full view.  Returning on the ridge, I triggered a loose snow sluff about 8 feet wide, 40 foot run, and 6 to 8 inches deep on a steep sun affected slope.  Lower angle slopes seemed solid and surface sluffs seemed unlikely to trigger anything deeper.  We were hoping a hard freeze overnight would give us a good window for our Saturday trip.

We left camp at about 6:30 on Friday, crossed McCue Ridge to the S and headed toward Chiwaukum Lake.  We hoped to traverse west as far as possible but came to a very long slide path that was a bit icy.  It probably would have been a fun ski but the consequences of a slip were unpleasant to contemplate.  We dropped down through the trees and traversed lower, still reaching the valley floor near the west end of the lake. From there, we skinned up the semi flat Ewing Basin and made a left into the Larch/Cup Lake drainages to the south.  Spectacular scenery, virtually every wall surrounding the area has slid.  Our two options to access the east face of Big Chiwaukum were saddles above Larch and Cup lakes.  We spent an hour scouting and rejecting the Larch Lake option due to a steep traverse above cliff bands.  After entering the Cup Lake drainage, it appeared that booting up the rocks on the east side of the lake would allow us to gain the ridge and get access to the east side of Chiwaukum.  This would allow us to avoid apparent wind slab in the obvious snow ramp to the saddle we had considered earlier.  After booting up the snow into the rocks, the angle became a little steep and there was a variable and sometimes thick layer of loose sugar under the breakable crust.  With no safe line up the rocks, we backed down and headed up the snow ramp.  It was a little steep at the top but the stability was good and no cornices.  We were rewarded with awesome views into the cirque on the east side of chiwaukum.  We had considered skiing 3500 vf down this bowl into the Glacier Creek drainage to Chiwaukum Creek and back over McCue ridge but we were running out of time and were concerned with the south aspect of the likely descent line.  With more time we could have made a gently rising traverse under the summit cliffs of Chiwaukum to search for access to the top but we probably would have had to circle far to the South.  We were tired, it was late, and we felt like we were on top of the mountain. 

The run down to Cup Lake was incredible.  Carveable wind pack with a consistent steep slope for 900 vf.  Another short steep slope below the lake and then rolling downhill back to Ewing Basin.  From Lake Chiwaukum, it back up and over the ridge to camp.  Due to routefinding and being tired and slow getting back, it turned out to be a 15 hr day, returning to camp after 9:00 by headlamp.