May 28, 2007, Cascadian Couloir, Mt. Stuart

After a few hours of sleep at the trailhead Tim, Khanh, Tobae and I were wondering if we really wanted to go after a VERY windy night.  At 4 am it was still howling and we did not feel 100% motivated.  We thought at the very least we should put ourself in position to not regret not going and get to Longs Pass and re-evaluate the situation there.  When we got to Longs Pass it was still windy, but most of the clouds were gone.  Continuous snow at around 5,200.  Luckily the beauty of Stuart kept us inspired and motivated.  However, the looks of the Cascadian Couloir was less of a motivater and made the skis seem heavier on the backpack.  Quick ski down on frozen solid white and soon the skis were back on the backpack for a short hike to Ingalls creek.  Lucky to find an easy crossing right away and soon we were walking uphill again at the bottom of the couloir.  A good amount of snow started on the left side of the couloir at 6,200 and I made an uptrack with the purpose of linking snowpatches for easy continuous snow route finding for skiing down.  It was early morning, but postholing was lovely closer to the false summit.  Quick hike over to the true summit and lounge in the sun with NO wind!  Glad we decided to get going in the morning as it had turned into a perfect bluebird day.  Were able to ski from the true summit and over to the false summit via a couple of rock hops.  Ski from false summit was on beautiful corn.  We were able to creatively get down to 6,200 with one short ski carry, but it will not be long before alot of vertical is lost.  It seems to me to be melting so fast this year??  The going up again to Longs Pass was much easier than expected for our now pretty tired legs.  Postholed a little bit going up, but not too bad.  Nice ski down to 5,200 and a quick walk brought us to cold beverages, salty potato chips from Tim's factory, and the waiting traffic on I 90.  Don't these people ever camp on other weekends?