Mt St Helens - Mothers Day

Mt St Helens
8,365 feet
Worm Flows Ski
Mothers Day, May 13, 2007

the Pantengliopolis House of Phat debut production: St Helens Mothers' Day 2007

It's been three years since the last Mt. St. Helens Mothers Day ski. The mountain had been closed for a couple years due to volcanic activity before they finally reopened it last summer, so we had a pretty nice-sized group of people ready to get back down there this year and everyone dusted off their old skiing dresses. I had to buy a new one because I took my old one back to Goodwill. Fortunately Kirsten and I happened across a very nice tropical print sun dress for $10 at Walgreens that fit the bill just fine. It even matched my skis and ski boots... I think.

Everyone trickled into the parking lot Saturday evening and after some debate about what time to get up in the morning, we settled on trying to head out by 7:30. Forecast wasn't great and indeed as we headed out it was cloudy and threatening to rain. The trail was dry for the first half mile or so and then when we hit snow and as we started climbing up toward treeline, tiny snow flakes started falling. Climbing up St Helens on Mothers Day is always quite a site. It's something to behold when people who aren't in dresses on a mountain look out of place. And it's quite hilarious to watch Murray get hit on by middle-aged men with moustaches.

About a thousand feet below the rim we climbed out of the clouds and had clear blue skies. We reached the crater rim after about 5 hours. The new crater additions that St Helens is building were pretty cool to see, and Rainier, Adams and Hood were all clearly visible. Chad topped out after a struggle for the last couple thousand feet, looking forlorn due to some intestinal problems. But after everyone took pictures and had a few drinks of beer, it was time for the glorious ski down.

To really get in the spirit, Marcus took his pants off from underneath his rather short dress. We started down on an aspect that was facing a little too much to the west and hadn't quite corned up. We did one group ski for a few hundred feet, then Marcus, perhaps with a little too much ski and too much alacrity for the conditions, washed out his tails and went for a slide on his side. The abrasian from the frozen snow gave him a nice bloddy 6 inch raspberry on his side. After giving him a little first aid (Tim's spare Goretex pants), we scooted back around to the south a bit and found the properly cured corn we were looking for. The skiing the rest of the way was fantastic, topped off by a little natural quarter pipe that people hit and caught some sick air off of. At the bottom the snow got a little gluey, but it was good enough that we didn't want to stop -- even when snow ran out, we'd walk across dirt in our skis to get to the next short patch of snow. Alas, eventually we came to the end of any continuous snow at all and had to walk the rest of the way back to the car.

It was great to be back at St Helens again. We had all missed her while she was closed for renovations.

Washington Pass

Highway 20, WA
Un-Cutthroat Pass and Birthday Tour
May 5 - 6, 2007

This weekend Marcus & Anastasia and Kirsten & I drove up to Washington Pass. The pass had just opened a little over a week ago so we were looking forward to some good early season conditions. We met up with Andy and Mica (and Tundra) at the pass late in the morning on Saturday and decided to try the Cutthroat Pass tour as an out-and-back from Rainy Pass. We skinned through firm snow and odd frozen chicken heads in the trees as we traversed below the flanks of Cutthroat Peak looking for the drainage to the pass. We couldn't get a good view up one of the prominent drainages we came to but decided to follow some other skiers tracks up it anyway.

That turned out to be a bit of a navigational mistake. We had a strange feeling about the tracks as we followed them further and further up the valley and then as they climbed up a ridge. Something about the way they kept side-stepping didn't seem right. Eventually we came to a high-point on the ridge where we could get clear views and we thought we were just around the corner from the pass. Cutthroat Peak seemed to be in the wrong place, however, so we took a bearing on it and discovered we had followed the other skiers to an uknown ridge spur off the west side of Cutthroat. Instead of back-tracking and trying to recover the route to Cutthroat Pass, we decided to cut our losses and get some skiing in. The south-facing slope down into the valley was good skiing on well-done corn. Once down into the valley we quickly skinned up to the top of a short slope on a north-facing aspect and found a thin layer of super nice unaffected old powder on a firm base.

We followed the drainage straight down to the road instead of traversing in order to shorten our time exposed to the frozen mank in the trees. From there we skinned back up the along the highway on top of the plowed snow wall. Back at camp, we grilled sausage sandwiches and had some beer, then after some deer shenanigans -- one young deer who wouldn't leave our campsite and another who interrupted our game of tag with Tundra -- and a visit from our camp neighbor, Jonathan (www.wildlight.org), we turned in.

Sunday we got up early and did the modified Birthday Tour. Much less of an adventure here. The only surprises were that the south-facing snow from Blue Lake Col was a lot better than we expected and the north-facing snow from the notch above the hairpin was way worse than we expected. The south slope hadn't been baked yet, so it was nicely corned-up. The north snow was sticky, gooey, glop. Felt like my skis were suction cups. The folks with the skinnier skis seemed to have an easier time, and Marcus utilized the power of speed to break through the shmoo-barrier. From there, it was back to Highway 20 and the road home, with a stop at Good Food in Marblemount along the way.

Kendall Chutes

Kendall Peak, WA
Kendall Chutes
April 15, 2007

Day before Tax Day. Perfect time to go skiing and relax. I met up with Andy, Mica, Becky, Lee and Murray on an expedition to try and find these chutes we had been hearing so much about. Kirsten wasn't feeling well, so she decided to stay home, but granted me permission to go without her. Pete, who had originally organized the trip woke up Sunday morning and decided he needed to spend the day at work. And a couple others who had considered going also dropped out, so instead of a hoard of 10, we were trimmed down to a much leaner hoard of six.

We skinned to the top of Kendall Stump, which was the part of the route we were familiar with, but without Pete there to consult us, we gave the map some extra attention and picked a route across the ridge, above Kendall Peak Lakes, and on to the back side of the chutes. We stopped for lunch as the in and out sun happened to be out, then picked one of the mellower lines and skied down one at a time. The snow was pretty icey at the top, which made things interesting since that was also the narrowest part of the chute. We scraped our way down this section, then the next section had lots of avy debris waiting for us. After surviving the bumpy ride through the avy debris, we finally hit good snow: an inch or so of fairly unaffected new snow on a firm base. We carved up the rest of the chute and gathered at the bottom.

Looking back up at all the great lines left to ski and pondering the unappealing conditions at the top, we agreed it had been a successfull recon mission and decided to leave the rest of the lines for another time -- when conditions were better (and when Kirsten could come).

Red Mountain

Red Mountain, WA
Southwest Face Ski
April 8, 2007

A week ago we went into the Commonwealth Valley at Snoqualmie Pass in a group of about a dozen with low expectations to ski Red Mountain. The snow in the valley was bullet-hard and as we passed under Kendall a few people skied past us. They had just come down from Red and said the snow was the same up on the mountain. Well, that was enough for most of us and we cut the day short, opting for a late breakfast at the Pancake House instead.

This week, we decided to give it a go again. Temps were higher. The group was smaller. We had Tundra with us. There was no way we could fail. I forgot my camera in the car so there is not the usual abundance of photos, but you will have to take my word for it. We did make it up Red. It was supposed to rain at some point during the day, but on the way up to the summit the snow seemed to be corning up pretty well and the rain clouds that were threatening only spat on us just a little bit. Skiing from the top was nice, but closer to the valley it turned into pretty thick chowder.

We skated out the valley and were back to the cars not longer after noon. Super nice tour for a quick day. Gotta keep hitting the Snoqualmie Pass area while there's still snow.