Home > Trip Reports > June 20, Kumquat couloir, Triad Peaks

June 20, Kumquat couloir, Triad Peaks

6/15/07
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Posted by danhelmstadter on 6/21/07 6:17am
It was great to finally meet Sky, and Phil. Sky briefly showed me some topo maps of the planned lines on monday evening. I had no idea what was in store though. The ruggedness, beauty, hugeness of the n. cascades is jaw dropping. After a long and awesome tour with Sky on tuesday, I met Phil and Sky at the road closer on cascade r. road around 5 wednesday , we soon found a good log to cross the river... and were on our way up the steep and and long trail through the forest. Time seemed to speed up once we broke treeline, and we enjoyed awsome views, and good skinning up a good way on Triad, where we booted up to a col because of steepness and sketchy wet snow on the s. aspect, setting off little wet sluffs which quickly grew as they went. we enjoyed some awsome corn skiing down the other side of the col (got a little manky the lower we got), then traversed around a little ridge to access the route to the third triad? cool views of pretty big natural wet lanches cascading down southern slopes. then we booted up to the couloir entrance just below the summit, with a HUGE view of the valley below at 3k? and the steep monster line SICK..  we were all a little concerned about the stability of the new snow ,,Sky volunteered to test it with a belay (sacrificing his free entry,, so we could go safe), the top of the couloir was awesome,, but did have a breakable crusty deepish wet snow characteristic, and i had a little advantage with my fatter skiis. The sluffs were a little scary, as we could only make one turn, then wait for the sluff to fall. i tried to connect two, and consequently got caught and carried for a few feet, but managed to ski out of it fairly easily (escaping knarly ride exposed to cliffs below). we made our way down the upper portion a little puckered but with smiles on our faces. the couloir dog legged and just kept going and going,, and the snow got better the lower we got, where it was absolutely awesome corn,, the couloir held steepness until the very bottom. exhausted but buzzing hard from the awesome descent, we booted most of the way up the glacier to the col where we had to negotiate an approximate 40m fith class rock face from the top. we traversed about 40f onto a downslopeing ledge, then rapped ~30m down to the glacier/snowfeild below the first Triad, and traversed back over a large snowfeild  towrds our clilmbers trail. we got some more corn turns down to the end of the snow, catching a little of that pollen on the way.
An awesome day with great people, in some rad mountains ,, im a lucky man .
Kumquat... hahaha.

Nice meeting and skiing with you Dan  :)

Unfortunately my helmet cam footage didn't turn out (must not have connected all cables or something....) - hopefully you and Sky got some good pics.

Oh man, I wish that I could've been there. Mon or tues I could've gone, but not Wednesday. Way to kill it. I can't wait to see the pics.

So dan, how does the n cascades stack up to other places you've been?

Dan, what a great two days!  Let's get after it again soon.

I posted a Kumquat Couloir TR on cc.com.




Ok, that's it.  I want to ski with you guys. 

^^ I second that. Your photos are always amazing!

This is pretty awesome! I read the cc.com post too.

My early May skiing this season in the North Cascades made me hungry for more. This report is motivation to quit my job.

-r

Sidnie here, Michael's wife. I want to ski that, too - and soon!

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june-20-kumquat-couloir-triad-peaks
danhelmstadter
2007-06-21 13:17:16