The snow is falling!
Unless you're the
turns-all-year kind of skier, there isn't enough to ski on yet, but there should be by next weekend.
I've been looking for a place for our ski-in camp this winter. We need something that isn't too remote or that requires expert ability for the approach (at least if I'm going to ski it). Also, because we might have to commit to a date long before we have a weather report, we need to find something with a protected approach and very moderate slopes so we have somewhere to play regardless of the avy conditions. With this in mind, I noted the contour lines around Snowgrass Flats look pretty inviting.
Check out the topo
here on acme mapper.The map looks good, but I wanted to be sure before I sign up to live out of a sled for a week. So I took a day off work and hiked up to have a look while I could still get in on foot. Because the early part of the week was forecast to be bad, I waited until Friday to skip work. The forecast was wrong about the days: Monday through Wednesday were beautiful and I should have taken one of those days off, but on Thursday, something great happened - everything above 4000' got covered in snow! Friday was just OK so I didn't get any of the famous Goat Rock views, but I had fresh snow the entire trip and didn't see another soul the entire day on the trail. The picture above is what I found when I got to the flats.
Down low, the trail was flat and sweet, with a couple of inches of new snow -- just enough to show off the tracks of all the little animals running around getting ready for winter. In the middle (climbing from Goat Creek to Snowgrass Flats) the snow was a bit deeper and the trail a bit steeper, but still easy hiking and probably reasonable skiing. It might be tough to drag a sled up and down the switch backs in this section though, so we might want to think about dropping the sleds at the base of the climb if we bring them. Up high, I was enveloped in fog and post-holing above my knees so I turned around seven or eight hundred feet below the summit of Old Snowy.
(click for larger version)
From the elevation profile, you can see the trail is perfectly flat for two and half miles, then climbs 1250' in the next two miles to Snowgrass Flats. From there on up, except for one or two little steps, the terrain still isn't very steep. The profile shows about 10 degrees average, but this was mostly traversing, so the actual gradient is more than that, but not by much; I didn't see very many places more than about 25 degrees.
The only place the trail crosses a slope steep enough to be of concern is the climb between Goat Creek and the flats. This section is all in heavy timber though, so no worries. The flats themselves are, well, flat, so we're good there too. (Don't fret that it's too flat, there's plenty of dips and drops around, and some steeper slopes in easy reach so if conditions are good we can branch out for some more exciting rides.)
Because of the clouds, I didn't get a look at the upper slopes of Old Snowy or Ives Peak, but judging from the topo, we probably won't climb them unless the snowpack seems pretty stable. Bring an ice axe though, in case we get the chance.
The only thing that doesn't seem ideal here is the approach. There's a snowpark, but it's about eight and half miles away and 2300 feet below the trailhead. We might want to see if we can find a snowmobiler to ferry us in, or this might make a good place to drag our gear on sleds.
Please look over the pictures
here on the Picasa Album and let me know what you think.
