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Topic: May 25, 2003, Banshee Peak MRNP (Read 939 times)
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Robie
Member
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Posts: 1131
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Ken Zirinsky and Charles our web site host met at my house 7am with apprehensions about the weather for this tour.Our mantra "Well it is the dry side of the Park".We drove up 410 under ugly low clouds and rain got to the trail head at Frying pan creek,dressed and headed up in cloudy drizzle. More mantra. Snow on the trail was more suited for boot till the last 1/4 of trail. We couldn't see chutes but from 2 weeks ago I knew there were some big cornices ahanging. We entered Summerland and stayed on the right of Frying pan creek till we found a snow bridge worthy of weight.As it happened the snow bridge was directly opposite of the summer trail to the shelter.MAntra and karma seemed to be working as we were skinning up and around under Meany Crest we were enjoying great veiws.Still lots of clouds We didn't get our first veiw of Little Tahoma and Mt Rainier till we were up at Panhandle Gap. Panhandle Gap was heaivly corniced but at East end there was small break and passable. We chose to stick to Burgdorfer's route and go east through a small saddle adjacent to Panhandle. Big chute and a little tricky till we figured it out by dropping a little lower.In fact Ken And Charles got to liking this chute so much they took a couple runs.Full mantra kicked in, Banshee ahead and Rainier poking in out of clouds.Banshee at around 7400' isn't very steep but is in Command of impressive cornices and has a spectacular veiw of the whole banana. The summit of Banshee was very windy up there so we didn't linger.At times the clouds were bumping our heads. The run down was disappointly slow due to sticky snow.Lots of other steeper runs to be had up there on way in and out.We put in about 3600' ,10mi and 10.5 hours. Ken probaly got closer to 5000' with his forays down in to "KEN's Canyon. We skied 70% back to the car with Charles connecting patches for 90%.Saw no other skiers but 2 snowshoers camping at Summerland shelter area.
"It's the dry side of the Park"
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"I bought my rope at Walmart ,my gloves at costco but paid dearly for my dynafits"
Apparant Moderator of what sucks
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Charles
Administrator
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Posts: 1087
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Thanks to Robie for organizing and leading this great tour! While the snow seemed overall pretty stable, N facing slopes seemed to have a bit deeper mush (up to 6") and surface slides in this layer went readily on steeper slopes.
On our way back, however, we could see that cornice collapses in two places had triggered impressive slides after our initial passing. One of these was from the cornice on Panhandle Gap, and the other was in the bowl just to the SE of Meany Crest, both pretty much N facing. The latter appeared to start from a chunk of cornice, which triggered a laterally spreading surface slide, which then gouged down another, deeper, step in its middle. Pictures are better than words:
This turned out to be another 250 photo day! I'll have home page photos from this trip toward the end of June
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« Last Edit: 05/27/03, 06:48 AM by admin »
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