17 January 2008 - Yodelin Snowshoe Trip

There's plenty of snow in the mountains, but it rained and refroze over the last couple of days, so we decided snowshoes would work better than skis this weekend when a bunch of us went up to the old Yodelin ski area just east of Stevens Pass.

There was quite a temperature inversion on the west side of the mountains. It was below freezing when we met at the Woodinville Park & Ride, and getting colder as we headed up US 2 until we got to Gold Bar. From there, the temp jumped up 15 degrees before we got to Index. As we climbed up close to the pass it started cooling off again and as we crossed the summit it turned cold and was down to 20 degrees by the time we buckled on our shoes in the parking lot.

The cold made the snow CRUNCHY! Skiing wouldn't have been much fun, but it turned out to be great for the snowshoes and we made up to the ridge in record time. We crunched on over to the south side and warmed up in the sunshine while we ate our lunch. While we were sitting there I measured a snow depth of 230cm (7 1/2 ft) with my avalanche probe; there's a decent amount of snow this year, but so far it hasn't worked out all that well for skiing.

After lunch, Dan and I decided to run up to summit (yes there is a Yodelin Mountain) while the rest of the group headed down. We climbed up steeply through the killer trees (why killer trees? look at the photos) and then the ridge was pretty flat. We found a clearing with a bit a of view, called that the top and headed down.


On the way down we ran into my old climbing buddy Octavian. (You might remember him wielding a homicidal ice axe on this trip to Snowfield Peak)

Looks like he's got a new climbing partner now.


You can see the rest of my photos here on Picasaweb picasaweb.google.com/trueguides/YodelinSnowShoeTrip. Also I'll drop off a CD with Mike so he can add them to the group collection; bug him if you want to see the whole mess.

10 January 2009 - Mt. Teneriffe

The weather over the week hasn't been setting up a great base for skiing this weekend - we were looking at either slush or a frozen rain crust covered by a little unconsolidated snow at most of the sno-parks. We opted instead to break out the snowshoes, figuring those could handle whatever conditions we found. And what better trip for snowshoes than one that starts with "well, first you hike to the top of Mt. Si..."

The forcast was for a few showers and a snow level around 3000' on Saturday morning, so Octavian and I headed for Mt. Teneriffe. We went up the Mt. Si trail with the early birds, leaving the parking lot a bit after 8:00. We put on the yak-traks at about 2500' but the trail was actually in pretty good shape and it wouldn't have been too hard with just boots. It was dry and there was even a bit sun in a couple of spots.

There were quite a few folks on the Si trail and when we started out on the trail to Teneriffe we followed some snowshoe tracks for about 20 minutes before we came to where that party turned around. We ran into more tracks later when we hit the road/trail that goes directly up to Teneriffe from the Mt. Si road, but that party turned off (or missed the main route) and it looks like they just went up one of the minor summits on the ridge. We never saw either party, or anyone else for that matter, after we left Mt. Si.

The snow started to fall while we were on the road part of the trail, and was coming down pretty steadily by the time we left the main road for the climb over the false summit and along the ridge to the true summit. It was all pretty easy until we got to within 250' or so of the summit. It was pretty steep and there was 3 inches of loose powder on a very hard crust. It was a little dicey on snowshoes so we took them off, but the crust was so hard we couldn't kick steps, and the powder was so loose it wouldn't support our weight. So we put the shoes back on and kicked them in as hard as could to make the climb. (We both had MSR Lightning Ascents, and they would penetrate the powder and stick in the ice, but it was a lot of work.) When we topped out, it was snowing hard and the wind was blowing so hard it was actually a little scary to stand on the summit.

The tricky part then was to get back down that 250' without too much bodily damage. The slope wasn't exposed (lots of trees) but it was steep as hell and there was no footing available so we did the tarzan thing and just dropped from tree to tree.

It was a long day getting to here so we decided to just follow the road all the down instead of climbing back up to Mt. Si. The snow just kept getting heavier as we descended and then of course turned to rain by the time we were about half way down so we got thoroughly soaked. This is a 12 hour hike for us, and there's about 8 1/2 hours of daylight this time of year so the bottom half of the trail was all by headlamp.

I took a few snapshots of the trip, but I can't post them yet -- the camera blew out of my jacket and got packed full of snow while I was sliding on my face down the 20 feet from the summit to the first tree. It's drying out on the desk next to me right now so if it recovers or Octo sends me the shots he took, I'll post an update.

Update: Octavian sent some of his pictures and my camera finally dried out as well so I added a couple of photos above.
Here's were we went:

View Larger Map

2009 January 3 - Chiwawa Sno-Park

This was a big ski weekend for everyone here in the Northwest. Too much of a good thing meant it's been tough for anyone to get into the mountains on any of the weekends in December. Heck most of us haven't been able to get to Bellevue because of the snow, but today the roads cleared off and we hit the road with everyone else. But as we cruised over the summit at Stevens Pass, you can see we passed all those suckers as they tried to find a parking spot at the resort.

Instead of stopping at the summit, we were headed to the Chiwawa Sno-Park over by Lake Wenatchee. We were the first car in the parking lot and had the main trail almost all to ourselves for the first half of the morning. This is called the "See-n-ski" trail because of the great views of the Wenatchee River and some of the peaks up the White River Valley. We did the loop and made a couple of short side trips in the _DEEP_ untracked snow in the forest and made it back to the car easily by lunch time. There were a fair number of cars of there by then, but I'm still worried about the popularity of this sport - this was the major ski weekend of the season so far, and I would have thought the lot would have been packed.

Maybe all the self-propelled skiers were at Cabin Creek. After lunch I went over to the upper trails (Squirrel Loop and Flying Loop). These are supposed to be more challenging than the See-n-ski (blue and black respectively). Challenging they were, because the state doesn't bother to groom them and there's been a lot of fresh snow lately. I followed the tracks of a couple of snowshoers part way up the Flying Loop, but since I was moving faster, they graciously stepped aside and gave me the honor of finding the route and breaking the trail myself. Here you can see one of them just below the high point of the loop.

When I got near the top, I could see the haze of that obnoxious blue smoke and was a little disappointed to see the snowmobiles had been criss-crossing the marked ski trail - they just can't seem to stay on their routes. Oh well, I can't let that get me down. The return trip back down my tracks and through the tall trees and deep snow was great. Stopped at the 59er diner for dinner, and made it back over the pass just as the next storm was getting busy erasing all our tracks from the day...

See the rest of the photos on picasa at http://picasaweb.google.com/trueguides/ChiwawaSnoPark##