May 29, Silver Peak Basin

We made yet another last minute call to get out in what looked to be the least bad weather of the weekend. With long days, schemes for a nearby easy-access ski, and a forecast calling for better later, we slept in appropriately. The road (I think it's FR 9070, Cold Creek Road?) starts having bits of snow (enough to stop a low-slung sedan) before the first switchback. We made it well above the second switchback, but still had perhaps a 5-10 minute walk to continuous snow just a bit before Windy Pass.

We each chose our own routes up - me in the beautiful mossy-large-tree forest, and others more out on the clearcut edge with a nice view of the fog sitting over and in front of Granite, Chair, etc. There's still very good cover all the way up into the basins beneath Silver Peak. We chose the mellower west basin lobe, and again each chose our own lines. There was a slight frosting of new wet snow on top of well consolidated spring corn, and it was very easy to climb and keep an edge in the relatively firm snow.

As we crested the ridge that leads to the summit, I felt slightly disappointed that the snow on the Annette Lake side had melted out so thoroughly, as I'd hoped to be able to head down toward the lake on the snow-covered talus slope that sometimes waits just a little later to melt out. Oh well. We enjoyed lounging for a while in the fog, watching it slowly rise, revealing territorial views of various mountain bases, and more importantly, gave us some visibility for our ski down. The cloud remained over the summit, removing any thought of wasting time walking to tag it when the skiing below looked so nice.

As is our style, we each chose our own lines down through the basin. I tended to ski lines to the skiers left side of the basin walls, giving me 3-4 nice moderately steep shots, a few with enough length to really get the dance going. The snow skied wonderfully, with just a hint of grabiness on the flats. The old snowmobile highmark tracks are still visible, and a few were still worth paying attention to when crossing, but overall they're of no consequence at this point. The runnels in the lower areas of the basin were soft enough to be inconsequential. My lack of recent waxing made it very easy to, at the bottom of each drop, traverse left and upwards across the basin wall to the next nice drop point, giving me a suprising amount of extra vertical as I waited for some of the slower party members to make their way down toward me.

At the bottom of the basin, we all agreed it was well worth another run up. The clouds were nearly revealing peaks and blue sky for our next visit to the ridgetop, and the second run down was even nicer than the first now that we were all warmed up. At this point, we decided we'd had our fill, and made our way quickly down the forest/clearcut edge back to Windy Pass and the van just beyond, content in how much fun we'd had for so little driving and "approach effort."

This is yet another of those fun little tours that close as quickly as they open this time of year. Should be plenty of snow for it next weekend, and perhaps a maze through the clearcut the weekend after depending on the weather.