Hwy 20- Gate-to-Gate Tour?

Is anyone aware of a gate-to-gate ski traverse of the North Cascades Highway (35 miles I think)? I've searched here and elsewhere, and can't find any mention. Clearly it would require mammoth vertical, but given the number of cardio mutants around, surely someone has done it?<br><br>cheers, and keep burning those skis for Ullr!<br>Drew

Um, cardio for carcinoma. You would be sucking snowmobile exhaust the whole way, even in the dark, and even on the weekday....Much akin to road biking on busy streets, but worse....

awww crap, I knew there had to be a good reason.....

I saw Gordy Skoog skate skiing across sr20 and back the next day.This was a couple years ago now.Maby he can shed some endorphins @ his trip with you.

I saw Gordy Skoog skate skiing across sr20 and back the next day.This was a couple years ago now.Maby he can shed some endorphins @ his trip with you.

I don't know if Gordy reads TAY much. I remember him mentioning this trip, but I don't have any details.

In December 1978, Gordy organized a four-day trip in which five of us crossed the North Cascades highway from east to west on skinny skis. He lined up KOMO-TV's Exploration Northwest to film it. Here's a photo I took at the Washington Pass overlook on the first or second day.



Snowmobilers had started using the highway, but not nearly as much as today. The KOMO-TV crew used snowmobiles. They bailed out after Washington Pass because the machines were bogging down too much. That wouldn't be a problem today. Our ski group completed the crossing with just a few miles of trailbreaking along Granite Creek. The rest of the route had snowmobile tracks.

Later in the spring we did a trip with KOMO-TV to Table Mountain (near Mt Baker ski area) and they got enough footage to finish the program, which aired in 1980 as "Backcountry Ski Tour." The program included footage from the highway crossing, but they rewrote the story to focus on the Mt Baker trip.

The family of Don McCune (the late host of the program) sells videotapes of this and other Exploration Northwest programs through the following website:

www.donmccunelibrary.com/

<br><br>The family of Don McCune (the late host of the program) sells videotapes of this and other Exploration Northwest programs through the following website:<br><br> www.donmccunelibrary.com/

<br>Not to pull from the tread, but.....<br>I really loved this show when I was a kid. The first of it's kind. Followed by the show How Come? Now replaced by Evening Magazine and so on...<br>I met Don's widow at a fair selling those expedition tapes. She was really nice and got to hear a lot of the inside stories. <br>Often times I dreamed of producing a show that has that sort of curious content, that is easier to do these days.<br>Thanks for sharing the event Lowell!<br>That must have been some adventure!<br>Joe