Scout Tour - Crystal Area

Woke up to the sound of my phone rather than my alarm...this isn't right I thought.  Sh**, alarm didn't go off!  Luckily the legendary Snoslut was forgiving of my 15 min. setback.  After meeting him at a P&R off of 410, we picked up "Styles Kyle" in Enumclaw and we headed up 410.

We knew (or rather hoped dearly with our fingers crossed) that we might be finding stashes of the good stuff, and we hoped to lucifer that it would have sufficient base as well...

We were able to skin most of the way, although a common feature especially on SW - SE faces slopes was a firm hoar frost over dry, sugary snow.  After skinning up for a ways, we finally came to an amazing viewing area with incredible shots of all the major volcanoes in the area, the north cascades, bits of the Olympics and beyond.  Needless to say, bluebird and crisp.  However, the steady wind was adding to the crispness of the day, and also to the wind-scoured crust that could be found on almost anything with snow, exposure, and a SW-NW aspect.  The key was to find some aspects that were NW-N and protected...which we did find.  We selfishly rellished in the 1-1.5 ft of creamy goodness with none of us taking any major damage.

After scouting a number of other aspects and trying to accumulate some vertical, we felt content with our trip thus far and began the trek back to our car.  On the way back we experienced some small wet slides but more so was the consistency of the crust.  The sun had heated it significantly, and measurements said the thickness was about 2"-3", and was very solid.  Underneath was sugaryfor maybe 4"-6".  Once the next storm pours through, most of these slopes with be extremely unstable. 

We had a lot of fun, and covered a lot of terrain...like I said, we got some turns, but we also were scouting out some good ideas for when mother nature decides to start puking.  Besides saying we were in the Crystal backcountry, snoslut wanted to keep this a bit hush hush.  So, if you're a good problem solver and can deduct where we were from our pics, well then know that there are still some good lines to be had! 

Dinner at Mazatlan in Enumclaw.  Cheers.

1st - Snoslut skinning through a stream
2nd - Kyle Miller dropping some wind scoured chute that I believe afterward was thusly named "El Cheapanibre"
3rd - Snoslut slashing "El Cheapanibre II" (which had MUCH better powder...which I think should make it's name "El Lunchable"...)