Home > Trip Reports > January 16-20, 2008, McCully Basin, Wallowas, OR

January 16-20, 2008, McCully Basin, Wallowas, OR

1/16/08
OR elsewhere
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Posted by hypermartyr on 1/25/08 1:27am
If you feel like skipping the details, and just want to see the pictures,
check out:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22552896@N02/sets/72157603775841240/

Otherwise, read on!

We departed Portland around 2pm on the 16th, and made the 6 hour
drive to Joseph, where we stayed Wednesday night at a local B&B.

Here we met 2 more gentlemen from Idaho who would be our yurt
mates for the trip.  Around 7am on Thursday, Morgan showed up,
he would be our trusty guide for the 5 day trip in the Wallowa Wilderness.

After a briefing on the inherit dangers of backcountry travel, and the
obligatory signing of waivers, we drove to the trailhead, where we
would begin the long 5.2 mile uphill ski into the yurt.  The slog in
was pretty uneventful, unless you consider 4 straight hours of
uphill skiing without a break to be exciting.

We arrived at the yurts around 2pm, and immediately began the
celebratory beer drinking, along with building a fire, and fighting
for the best cot.  After a couple of tasty beers, Morgan called us
all together for a quick refresher course in the use of our avalanche
beacons.  With great success, we all managed to find the buried
beacon in time before it suffocated (heh).

Now, it was time for dinner, and the 5 of us made our way to the
kitchen yurt where Morgan had prepared a fine meal of Copper
River salmon, brown rice with sun dried tomatoes and pine nuts.
This, along with a few more beers made for a fine evening.

Little did we know what Morgan had in store for us the following
day!

Left the yurts early the next morning after a big breakfast of
scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns.  From there we
proceeded to climb to the top of the ridgeline surrounding
McCully Basin, and take in the views:



After a bit of lunch, and digging a hasty avy pit, we skied the
1000' west facing slope, which began as hard crust,  turned to
tricky varying powder, then ended in sastrugi.  Very fun though:



For the remaining part of the day, we climbed and skied several
more aspects, eventually finding some sweet powder during the
6th climb/ski.  Then returning back to the huts for a hearty dinner
of chicken and couscous.

Saturday morning was mostly clear, but with signs of a coming
storm.  Nonetheless, we spent the entire day climbing and skiing
the east facing aspects in Little Sheep Creek basin.  And managed
to find some excellent powder stashes in the process:



End of the day saw a big storm approaching, so we headed for
the huts, drank some beers, and had a sauna session before
heading to the kitchen yurt for some much needed pork tenderloin
and mashed potatoes!

Sunday morning, there was at least 8 inches of new snow at
the yurts, so we decided to leave the huts early in the morning
and try and get in some powder turns before we had to leave.
Needless to say, the powder was very good, and we ended up
climbing and skiing for the better part of the day!!! 




URL for the guide service:  http://www.wallowahuts.com/





























Our five-day trip Dec. 2006 was the best hut trip I've ever done, except for the drive that is 2 hours past nowhere.  Economical, too.
But TELL NOBODY b/c we want to keep the secret all to ourselves, right?    ::)

Yep, mum's the the word!!!!

our turn starts Sunday. Hope you all didn't track it out too much.

Nah, it was fricking dumpin when we skied out on Sunday... should be plenty of freshies assuming it's not all crsuted over by now.  If you're going in with Morgan, he is the master of finding powder stashes!!! 

ps. tell him hi from Sugar.

Reply to this TR

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january-16-20-2008-mccully-basin-wallowas-or
hypermartyr
2008-01-25 09:27:57