Mar 30, 2008, Schralping the Gnar Red Mt Cle Elum

"Schralping the gnar" is my 20-something nephew's term for good skiing. Red Mt near Salmon Le Sac had it today. This is good terrain, though a bit far from the west side. It is at its best when it is cold, as the tour starts at a low altitude. This week's cold temps and fresh snow were perfect. Pico, Margy, Bill, Swooze, Judy, Scott and I met up and were joined by Anita and Eric on the uptrack.

Red Mt. is a complex of 4 ridges defining 3 bowls. This time up we angled up the first ridge skier's left, headed for the first of the 3 Red Mt. bowls (Bowl 1?). This route borders the left edge of the large cutblock and stays to the left of the large and marginally passable gully. Once up in the bowl we turned right and contoured up the second ridge. We had a great 800' run down to the bowl floor in 12-15" light density powder, then climbed up again aiming a bit down the ridge. Fron there we skied about 3,000' all the way to the valley floor and road. Again we found light powder that felt more like January than the end of March. The snow in the cutblock above the road was heavier but not crusty, and reasonable though not stellar skiing.  There were some great steep old growth glades heading down the ridge toward the gully.

2 hasty pits at about 5,000' showed 12-15" of light density powder on a sun or rain crust, with a clean shear after about 5 taps from the elbow. We saw no instabilities. There have at some time recently been 2 impressively large avalanches, one in the upper bowl and another at the lower cutblock, with lots of damage.