March 26, 2008, Jim Hill Mountain

Met up with JimH for a midweek trip this morning. Our initital goal was to do Jim Hill Mountain but, recognizing the potential for bad weather we lined up Arrowhead as a backup, anticipating less whiteout potential up high due to the trees. Things were not looking good leaving Seattle in the rain and having snow and limited visibility of the peaks above driving up to Stevens Pass. Upon making it to the access road 300 m west of the ventilators, still a lot of low hanging clouds so we decided Arrowhead was likely the better option. Shortly after skiing past Henry Creek on the forest service road, Jim spied what he thought was a small sucker hole developing. I must admit to not being convinced but that got us thinking that Jim Hill Mountain might work for the day so we backtracked on the road and decided... weather be damned... we would give it a shot. Jim's hunch turned to be the call of the day as we met with huge pockets of blue sky, plenty of sun and great snow.

We started our ascent too close to Henry creek and met with some not particularly pleasant traversing. Fortunately, there was 2-3 inches of new snow on the firm, icy crust so skinning wasn't too bad. Eventually, we got high enough and met up with a trail put in by folks who had done the route over the weekend. From that point on, travel was pretty easy. In the first big clearings we saw the debris from some big slides that had come off the ridge to our west. These looked like they had started as sloughs from up high. The skinning up to the open glades was easy on the partially filled in old skin track. Lots of blue sky and sun by this point of the day which was doing wonders for the spirits. As we got above 5K, the recent snow and lots of wind had covered in the old track so it was time to break trail on our own. Roughly 8-12 inches of penetration at this point.  Lots of traversing had us up on the summit ridge about 3 hours after leaving the forest service road. We were finding that the top layer of snow didn't have much cohesion to it in the upper bowl

We skied off the ridge and caused some very minor sloughs but no cohesive layers broke off. We completed an 1800 foot run in some really nice light snow. A touch wind-affected up high in the bowl but very light powder down below. It was so good, we put on the skins and went up to do it all over again. Met a pair that had come up Henry Creek then saw another group ski of 4 ski off the top after having come up from the Lanham Lake approach. The first of that group off the top touched off a moderate sized slough with his first turn, while one of the pair told us back at the cars that he triggered a small slab with an 18 inch crown on his first turn.

The second run down was just as good as the first one with the good snow continuing all the way down to about 4500 feet where we eventually ran into some crust over mush. Once back in the trees, it was quite easy following the tracks out and down to the road, coming out at what is probably the best place to head up the route... at the blue and pink flagging just after a switchback to the left on the road.

Overall a great day... and great to get out with a partner with great hunches!

Photos to come soon...