I don't remember now why we chose to do this -- I guess it was just time for another snow shoe outing instead of a ski trip, but a bunch of us headed up to Skyline Lake and the ridge above it. Oh yeah, I do remember - even though there was a ton of snow from earlier in the week, there was a nasty crust, at least below 5000', so walking seemed like the better bet. The forecast was for a decent morning with another system moving in after noon, so we picked something pretty easy and reasonably close to town and that's how we ended up here. The route up is straight north out of the Stevens pass overnight lot and the route back is down the fall line so it's pretty hard to get lost even if the weather turns bad. And if you stay in the trees or on the middle of the ridge you can avoid most of the avalanche terrain.
We hiked up past the lake and stopped for lunch just on the northwest side of the ridge. Mike and I tried for one of the minor summits (just west of the saddle above the lake) but right around 5000' the firm snow ended and the deep drifts began. We wallowed around for awhile but even with snow shoes it was challenging when the ridge got steep, and we pretty much had to stay on the steepest part of the ridge because we didn't want to get out on any of the exposed slopes, so we turned back without our summit pin.
The rest of the pictures are here on Picasaweb.
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