April 28, 2006, Phantom (and 29, Nordic Pass)

Yesterday went up the Phantom. Waterfall section is melted out, and the bypass is annoying as always, on the second section a 'key hold' (big stump) is really starting to rot out. Phantom part not too slide scarred and pretty climbable. It was a pretty warm day and climbing in the sun was tiring. Upper part of mountain pretty debris laden. There was an obvious point where crossed over a rain/snow line from many days previous, and that new snow still hanging around was slidy and heavy. Looked at both Slot and Crooked. Slot looked doable albeit snow at entrance was still a bit overly firm, but ominous sliding noises came from within the Slot, probably results of the hanging snow on the left wall getting the hot sun and dumping in. Crooked would have required a cornice drop onto what I felt was an unstable slope of that old stuff. I think both could have been fine but just didn't feel like it that day and didn't really have much steam left for the North bowl escape anyways.

On way down W face set many slow messy sloughs, and the skiing was grabby and not great. I had been wondering on the way up why I hadn't seen many other skin tracks, and got my answer when I saw how much the sloughs had obliterated it. But the Phantom was quite nice, corn at just right consistency even though it was past noon.

Today in the morning I went up and over Ski Acres, past Rockdale Lake, and eventually joining the blue diamond route to Nordic Pass. Nice and quiet, snow soft but not too soft, expectedly a little mossy/messy in the trees but still could go pretty fast. Nice exercise on a better than forecast day. Could hear snomos over towards Windy Pass, and a pair of them also came over to the Ski Acres runs and ran up and down various steeper runs several times, having accessed from the top via the Hyak crossover. Sigh. PhilFort was correct about a statement he had made in an old thread, that there's no way you can get their 'license', those stickers are too damn small.