Feb 5, 2012, North and South Twin sisters

Superbowl Sunday - Two friends were leaving Bellingham and needed to be at the airport at 4am. My normal ski partners were already out in the mountains on their way to the CJ couloir, so I was left with a de-facto alpine start, sunny-ish weather, and stable snow. To cap it off, a co-worker had recently attempted to climb North Twin sister and gotten lost on the logging roads, so thoughts of the twins were fresh in my head.

I was eager to get out on something fairly ambitious in the alpine, but I was equally eager to avoid wandering around on glaciers alone. The Twins range seemed like a good compromise between objective hazard and potential payoff.

I arrived at the locked gate at 4:30am and found two other cars. I hadn't slept well, so I took a 30 minute nap in my trunk before starting up the road. With a little extra gas in the tank, I was able to make quick progress up the maze of logging roads, and despite the addition of many new spur roads, and a lack of moonlight, I managed to avoid any wrong turns. About an hour later I was switching to skins, and soon after that, I passed a frost covered tent still full of sleeping occupants. I passed another tent at the trailhead to the West ridge and jumped onto a skin-track to the North Face of North Twin that looked like it had been set two days before.

By 8:45 I was at the base of the north face of north twin and I decided that I was going to try to ski both the NE face of South Twin and the N face of North twin in the same day, a plan I'd been hatching for the last few days. The whole production involved finding the chute that connects the west side of North twin (the side I approached on) to the East side, and the sisters glacier. I'd thought I'd seen the correct chute on previous trips to North Twin, but I'd never actually checked to see if it connected.

Does it go? Can I climb out if it doesn't?

The chute wasn't too bad, but skiing alone and dropping into it blind, I got the full value out of it. As I neared the bottom, I was relieved to find a ski-length wide patch of snow connecting it to the east side of the mountains.

After a quick snack, I was able to make quick time over supportive snow across sisters glacier to the base of South Twin. South Twin was covered in a supportive, stable, 1-foot thick layer of consolidated snow, but below the snow was what appeared to be glacial ice. I wasn't really expecting ice and wasn't really equipped to handle it. In my haste to get out the door, I'd forgotten my ski crampons and real crampons, luckily I decided to bring one ice tool rather than a mountain axe.

Crossing the bergschrund was interesting, but I managed to find a narrow spot that was well supported and possible to skin over. The face soon steepened significantly and required bootpacking. In places the snow was thin enough that my boots were bottoming out on the ice below, and I expected to get shut down at any minute, but the snow provided just enough of a foothold to make efficient upward progress. At the top I encountered a scary feeling hard slab over a sizable cliff, but was able to climb the neve near the edge of it and avoid having to cross it. From the summit, North Twin looked awesome.

Looking south from south

I melted some snow, ate some lunch, and took my time switching my gear over, by noon I was locked in and ready to ski. The upper slab was definitely my biggest concern, but by skiing the ice near the edge of it, and keeping my whippet handy, I hoped to minimize both the likelihood of my triggering anything, and the likelihood that I'd get entrained if anything did kick off.  After some tentative early turns, the decent went smoothly. The snow was a bit crusty, but generally stable and fun to ski (the pitch was fun too). At the bottom, I picked up my helmet that I'd dropped from halfway up the face (an bizarre repeat of my first time up north Twin) and coasted back over towards north twin.

Looking down the NE face of S. Twin

Splitboarder riding the N. face of N.Twin

After again eating and snacking, I climbed back up the chute that led to the North Face of North twin and from there skinned to the summit. At the top I met a solo splitboarder who was quite surprised to see me, but was glad to have company. We joined forces and skied surprisingly great snow down the north face and all the way back to our shoes. I was getting quite tired by this point, and it was really helpful to have someone else to share the adventure with. We made it back to the cars by 4pm, and I was back in Bellingham in time to watch the Giants win the superbowl

All in all, a great day in the mountains, a superbowl win I was happy about, and a new friend...so really just a great day period.

Ps. The photos are lower quality than usual because I took them all with my phone. I couldn't really justify dragging my giant SLR along on a solo day, though looking back on it, I wish I had.