August 10, 2003, Flett Glacier

Hmmm, raining hard as I left the house at 7. Hmmm lightning visible in sky over Buckley. But amazingly enough weather held together enough to get a trip in.  Probably about half of the various lobes of Flett is now blue ice, and in those areas nothing is skiable on surface. Mostly this is the center, and the edges are where the skiing is. A lot of that blue ice is melting fast, with strange surface slush and rivulets of water running down over the harder stuff below. I had originally planned to make it up to the Russell per Amar's report but swirling fog, slanted rain and the occasional peal of thunder coming from the slopes just E of the Flett and past Echo Rock made that direction seem like the wrong choice. Also, I had planned on ascending the draw right under the cliff of Observation Rock (this was a fun run last time), and sadly it was melted out with loose lava rock or sidehills of blue ice. Time to revise goals. Instead I just picked a couple of segments that looked good on Flett - a little headwall right under the cliff, and the slopes of central lobe that overlooked the pea soup lake sitting in the old terminal moraine. Pretty decent summer snow that provided enough shooshy surface and enough angle to satisfy anyone crazed enough to carry skis to Spray Park, but linking those two sections was a mess with lots of debris, carries and skittering over blue ice. Pretty good really for August turns, especially given that I was pretty worried on the hike in that thunderstorm activity was going to chase me off the mountain altogether.