Nov 17, 2007, Washington Pass

Tony and I made the long drive to the pass, arriving around 9am.  We were going to park at the Blue Lake trailhead, but there were already a couple of cars squeezed into the tiny pullout.  We ended up down at the hairpin where parking was easier.  It looked like good turns right to the car, and the snow was nice powder.

Under patchy clouds, we skinned up the gully and into the basin above, probably climbing 1800ft from the highway.  The snow was variable above the trees, with a bit of a wind crust.  I don't think the snowpack was much more than 2 feet deep, but since the bottom foot was solid we barely hit any obstacles, and small jumps were good to go.

We stopped short of the top due to the wind-funky snow, but enjoyed a nice run down in the powder and into the gully below, where we happened upon a group of 8 high school-age snowboarders bootpacking up (bye-bye skin track).  We had a bit of a strange conversation with them - they seemed nice, but it was obvious they were absolutely clueless about what they'd gotten themselves into.

We did a second run and found deeper snow than the first.  And luckily the snowboarders had left us some fresh tracks through the choke at the bottom (they made it back fine).  At this point (~1pm) it was snowing hard and we were worried they'd close the highway, so we called it a day.  The single plow couldn't really keep up with the snow, so it was some white-knuckle driving back over the passes.