Red Mtn / Commonwealth Basin Jan 1

After realizing I had forgotton my beacon on the way to Stevens Pass (in Monroe), we turned around, picked up the beacon in Seatte and headed for Commonwealth Basin (not feeling like trucking back to Stevens).

After some misdirection in finding the mountain, we eventually climbed a S facing ridge line up towards the peak.  Very windy.  We ended up turning around short of the peak due to equipment issues.  We dug a pit and did some analysis on a S-SE facing slope with about 30 degrees of pitch.  This is what we found:

3-4 inches of wind-blown/sun crust, followed by approx 2 feet of unconsolidated snow and then a marginally faceted frozen wet snow/rain crust (from Xmas I think).  We got a failure at this level 2 feet down on a Rutschblock test at the point of the 1st hop (level 5 I think).

From there we skiied down the S facing ridgeline back into Commonwealth Basin.  The sun crust from the previous day tempered the enjoyment, but it was still much fun.