TAY skiing photos : Mt. Daniel, Cathedral Rock, Peggy's Pond, Washington

www.turns-all-year.com	Washington backcountry skiing photos: Mt. Daniel, Cathedral Rock, Cle Elum River Turns All Year: Previous Home Page Galleries
	This is a gallery of photos which appeared on the Turns All Year home page in the past. Thumbnail images on this page can be clicked to view the full-sized photos, and lead into a slide show sequence for the gallery. These backcountry skiing photos are from a June trip to the east peak of Mt. Daniel, via the Cle Elum River, Cathedral Rock, and Peggy's Pond. The weather was perfect, the coverage was good, and all but the highest snow made for good skiing.
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from June 28, 2004:
Mt. Daniel, Cle Elum River, Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area, Washington,
June 16, 2004

Above Squaw Lake	Nearing Cathedral Rock	Mt. Daniel East Peak from Cathedral Rock traverse
Bottom of Hyas Creek Glacier cirque	Looking up Hyas Creek Glacier cirque to east peak	Booting above pond in Hyas Creek Glacier
Skinning below the spire	On divide between Hyas Creek and Daniel Glaciers	Traversing toward East Peak
Central Alpine Lakes peaks from East Peak	Matt skiing Mt. Daniel East Peak	Charles skiing East Peak
Matt skiing Mt. Daniel east peak	Charles skiing east peak	Matt skiing below spire
Matt	Mike	Matt skiing cleared slope
Charles skiing cleared slope	Charles skiing last roll	Mike skiing last roll
Hyas Creek Glacier cirque	View from Peggy's Pond	Granite Mountain, across Cle Elum River valley
Photos by Matt Depies, Mike Barton, and Charles Eldridge

Associated trip report: Mike, Matt and I took advantage of a beautiful day to do this trip, skiing Mt. Daniel, in the heart of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. We expected the coverage for skiing to be just about right based on TonyM's report from about 10 days earlier. On the drive up the Cle Elum River road it seemed like summer, and the road ford of Scatter Creek was reasonable for a passenger car, although we wouldn't have wanted it to be a whole lot deeper. The trail was bare to near Squaw Lake, patchy to about 5300' but then continuous to Cathedral Rock, bare except a couple of snow patches on the south traverse under Cathedral Rock, and then there was solid coverage from Peggy's Pond on. At Peggys Pond there were remnants of new snow from the weekend, but this layer deepened as we went up the Hyas Creek Glacier cirque, so that near the top there was up to 12" of new over the firm old snow. Skinning up we easily triggered slides of the new layer on steeper sun-warmed south slopes. We gained the ridge overlooking the Daniel Glacier near the spire, then traversed south under the east summit of Mt. Daniel to skin up its south ridge to within 10 feet of the top.
   There appeared to be good coverage straight down the east slope of the east summit, so we started skiing down that way. The snow was a little funky, with a hint of a breakable crust near the top of the deep layer of new snow, and near the bottom there were some rocks covered only by the new snow. From there down to 7000' the skiing was challenging with the crust layer overlying the deep new snow, but lower there was less new and a more south aspect to the slopes, and the skiing was good. We ski cut the steeper section around 6800' and cleared it of the new snow, then had nice skiing from there back to Peggy's Pond.
   Mike and Matt switched back to trail shoes at Peggys Pond, but I had brought my waxless skis so I kept my ski boots on for the Cathderal Rock traverse and was able to ski about three-fourths of the was back to Squaw Lake before the snow became unlinkable. The trail hike back to the car was shady and cool, but still seemed a lot longer than on the way up. Scatter Creek was a bit higher than in the morning, but still not a problem.
   Charles

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