April 5, Red Mtn (salmon la sac)

After lazily eyeing this one for a while, we figured "why not - worst case is that it's a good recon mission." John's recent report was a good reminder. We beelined up for the south bowl, and were pleased to find some short but sweet powder to lap a few times:



We had some lunch and then headed up to a high shoulder on a ridge between the south and middle bowls.




The snow just over the edge in the middle bowl was powdery, and it looked like there were some nice lines into the bowl. Instead, though, we skied partway back down the way we came up, imagining a nice corn run, and instead getting a turnable crust run:


We scooted around a ridge to get onto the slope that drops down toward Cooper road. We found a mix of beautiful open forest, a little avoidable doghair (very little - I love the open eastern forests!), and then into open clearcut which we followed to the road far below. After some crusty mashed potato up higher, the infamous salman la sac crud zone treated us well - it was actually the best skiing besides the wonderful powder laps in the south bowl. So we did one more lap here. The avalanche that swept through that clearcut (John Morrow posted some photos a little while back) snapped some decent sized trees off. There were a few spots we avoided due to threat of punji stake impalement.

Nice tour - thanks for the exposure John. I will be back in better snow for sure. The only thing that has me not regretting going there last Sunday (looks like it must have been off the charts!) was that we got tons great skiing in at the Pass that day anyhow.

There were a few other parties out on Red today, but we didn't see each other except at the trailhead.