April 7 Silverstar Mountain

The exceptionally warm weather predicted for the weekend made the decision about what to do difficult. Do I ski or do I mountain bike? Well, it has been a while since I did a ski tour in nice weather, but then again mountain biking is a safer activity when going alone.  Not being able to decide, I didn't, and loaded my skis and mountain bike into my SUV and headed on my way to Winthrop Friday morning. The mountain biking was a flop since even though the hills around Winthrop don't bare any snow, the dark forested areas on them did. I wasn't bummed though because tomorrow I had Silverstar Mountain to mark off my list. Saturday morning, after breakfast at the Duck Brand I drove up Hwy 20 to the gate at Silverstar Creek.  After leisurely 9:00 am start, I started making my way up the steep forested slope just east of the creek. I tried to follow some tracks, but found it difficult to do so due to the hard snow in the shaded areas and softening snow in the sunny areas. The steep slope finally flattened out for a while and I was soon looking forward to the steeper slopes again because the bruise on my shin that I got a few weeks ago when I fell on to a rowing machine rail really was starting to bother me. Alas, there appearing out of the trees - a beautiful steep bowl. I climbed the low angle avalanche path to the right although my objective, the summit, was to the right, but left seemed safer. At the top of the bowl, I had to traverse left across moraines beneath granite spires. I decided that the left most wide couloir looked like the most direct and safest route to the summit. It took me three hours to get to this point, and it was time for a long lunch and some basking in the sun to get ready for the final push.  What looked like easy skinning turned out to be a chance to try out the new Fritchi retractable crampons. They work, and now I'm climbing more that sliding down. My pace slowed significantly due to the softening and deepening snow. I was melting as fast as the snow in the midday heat. Sure wish I could have been here a few days ago when the snow I was on was probably 12 inches of powder. It took me almost 3 hours of slogging to get to the saddle below the summit. Alright there were some awesome views from the saddle, but the summit was staring down at me, egging me on. It looked easy enough, maybe just 300 feet, but after an hour of post-holing I made it to the top. The views weren't any better than from the saddle, but still it was nice to get to the top of this mountain since it was the highest non-volcanic peak I've been on in Washington. It was then I realized the sun was not hitting my descent route anymore, I worried the soft snow would crust up - I was right. Although it was an awesome and beautiful descent, it was also a lot of work trying to stay in some sort of control. After a painful push though the basin, now my shin is really throbbing, and a kamikaze decent through the forest I was back to at the road at about 5:30.