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New to Backcountry. Good low angle spots off i90?

  • rjwatt
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10 years 2 months ago #225285 by rjwatt
My girlfriend and I are new to backcountry skiing. We are looking for some beta on good low angle places to explore as we develop skills and gain experience. Preferably somewhere we can bring our dog too.

Any help would be appreciated!

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  • pipedream
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10 years 2 months ago #225288 by pipedream
Summit East midweek. Please pack the (dog) poop out.

Kendall Stump/Commonwealth Basin are viable options when the chairs are spinning at East (weekends and holidays).

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  • rjwatt
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10 years 2 months ago #225289 by rjwatt
Thanks!

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  • Jim Oker
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10 years 2 months ago - 10 years 2 months ago #225292 by Jim Oker
Depends on how low angle, and what your touring goals are. If you want a quickly accessed slope to lap, then pipedream has good suggestions. For a somewhat different flavor, Kendall Knobs/lakes via the road route that starts from the porta-potty on the east side of the highway by exit 54 is an option. There are some practice slopes a ways up the road around the knobs, and lakes, and a bonus for the pup is that it almost always has a pretty well beaten in snowshoe and skier tracks which will usually support the dog well. When we have a lot of new snow, postholing can be a real problem for a dog - but a strong dog may seem to be dealing with it; only years later will the back issues crop up... So having some routes that optimize for the dog but are OK for you can be a good thing. The road route up to the ridge on Margaret is another option along these lines thanks to snowmobiles, which are a mixed bag as you'll see and hear some up there but they also tend to have packed the roads firm all the way to the ridge crest which can be a big deal for your dog (and the lower portion of the road is groomed for snowmobiles; once you leave this you'll see far fewer of them btw...). And again there are some options for doing laps up there though many of them are closing in as the clearcuts continue growing in, and you can also follow the summit ridge from the road-accessed logging platforms to the false and true summits through pretty uncut forest. You can get up all the way to the summit ridge on a couple of branches of the road system - Burgdorfer describes one good route in his book. I've heard Amabalis is along similar lines but have never done it.

Once the ski area closes for the season, there tends to be a period when Summit Central is good for quick laps, and radio tower ridge behind it can be fun too if there's fresh late season snow at that point.

And there's a brief period, often late June, when the forest road 9070 has melted up to Windy Pass where the PCT crosses it, but when there's still snow right at the pass and above, where you can ski pretty moderate slopes all the way up to just below the summit ridge of Silver Peak via Windy Acres and Silver's NE basin (getting onto the summit ridge is a bit steep, but it's a short steep slope). You can of course do that in the winter too, via the Summit's groomed XC trail system, but only with a xc ski ticket and without the dog. And it's a long-ish way back there on mostly groomed trail (if memory serves, this is also in Burgdorfer's guidebook, which may be a good reference for you to check out...).

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  • snoqpass
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10 years 2 months ago #225294 by snoqpass
The bridge over rocky run is washed out and the price creek snow park is gone making snowmobile access more challenging

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  • Jim Oker
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10 years 2 months ago #225296 by Jim Oker
Well that likely weakens the "good for the dog in deep snow" premise for Margaret then. Thanks for the news - hadn't realized that bridge is out.

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