Home 2 Slot

Original trip report: https://engineeredforadventure.com/home-2-slot/

Background

Silly adventures are sometimes best done when the weather isn't great but you still wanna scratch the itch. Since moving to Snoqualmie/North Bend a few years ago, I've wanted to bike to the pass and ski from my house. Two years ago I did the summer equivalent, biking from my house, hiking up Snoqualmie, then biking back...and it was a really fun adventure.

With a marginal forecast and a bail the day before, I wanted a long silly day in the mountains. Before my roommate Erin left the house for her residency shift at UW on Friday, I tried to plant the seed: Home 2 Slot! 'Hmmm, let me think on that'. Sometimes really silly, dumb ideas need some fermenting.

Erin was down, impressive given she's a first year medical resident at UW and her schedule is absolutely brutal. She had a day off Saturday, getting off at 11PM Friday...oofta. We agreed to a leisurely morning start to prioritize sleep.

Trip Report

Starting a spring day from the house is pretty dang nice. I had some pancakes, morning coffee, and time to faff around with putting skis on the bikes. Erin's snoozed alarms got her out of bed by 9AM and we were loaded up and ready to roll by 10AM. An alpine start?

Donned with party shirts, we started riding from our house onto the SVT in near perfect weather for a silly adventure: overcast skies, not too strong a headwind, and little precip in the forecast. We both brought headphones for some podcasts and tunes to drown out some of the many hours of pedaling.

We made it up to the pass in around 3-3.5 hours, with a mandatory Laconia lunch stop. The Dolomite is by far my favorite of their sandwiches. 'Level 1, complete!' ,we remarked.

Re-fueled with food and coffee, we pedaled over towards Alpental for the start of the weirdness. Level 2. From studying Sentinel imagery, we knew that part of the climb would be dry, but how much? We changed into ski gear, unloaded the skis from the bikes, and began up the Snow Lake summer trail. We turned off quickly and began up the typical winter route up the Phantom, committing to the bushwhack. And surprisingly, it wasn't that bad! It was fun to see familiar sights with no snow, like the root ball for example.

Around 4,100' more consistent snow coverage began. We transitioned to ski boots and began up for a few hundred feet, before attempting to skin. There were many fuzzies strewn about on the snow, I thought once or twice about how badly my skins would get fucked up. But hey, this is spring. Part of the game.

As we poked into the clearing at 5,400', time stress and weather stress began to set in a bit. I started to do the mental math on how much we still had ahead of us, Levels 3 (the Slot), 4 (the exit), and 5 (the ride home). I didn't exactly want to be doing most of Level 5 in the dark. The light mist of Snoqualmie rain didn't help. But in time we started moving more efficiently and gaining time.

We booted up the south face in some sloppy moosh, then skinned to the entrance of the Slot. It was really quite fun to be up here, all alone, just Erin and I, at a point in the season that seemed semi-silly. We looked over at Snow Lake, with the edges of blue water showing. Man, if you skied the Cache right now you'd have to pond skim, Erin remarked.

Around 4 PM or so I rolled up to the familiar root snag that marks the entrance to the Slot. Bare of snow, it felt exotically familiar, a variation with a new flavor. There was even a cool little ridge above the Slot to scramble! We had brought a rope and harness to potentially rappel in, not knowing what conditions would be like. . . but looking down it was clean snow all the way down! Wow, it actually looks. . . good! We were pleasantly surprised to not notice a runnel, moats, or rocks about in the entrance.

We lingered for a little bit but not too long, we still had the final boss of Level 4 ahead of us. Erin dropped first as I snapped a few photos. Dropping in, we found some slooshy corn that was pretty fun! I never thought I'd be skiing these skis in the Slot, Erin laughed about her ZeroG 95s.

The Slot was surprisingly fat, a few rocks strewn about for sure but no moats or mandatory airs! I remembered that one year I had actually skied the slot one day later in the year, on Mother's Day, although that time it was pow. Down in Thunder Creek, we fist bumped and laughed. What silliness. We at some snacks and prepared for Level 4: the exit.

Just as the day had been thus far, Level 4 really wasn't that bad. We skied down from Thunder Notch (which we could actually boot directly up because of the lack of cornice!) into the trees, where some semi-heinous pollen and fuzzies ensued. Around 4,300', just above where we had transitioned, we took our skis off, as the fuzzies were pretty darn bad. We kept ski boots on for the hike down, though, which was definitely the move: the rigid shell was much easier to edge on steep dirt.

We made it down without much shwack, taking the standard winter route below the waterfall. Sam, this honestly didn't take that much longer than in the winter, Erin pointed out. Funny. We passed a few confusingly amazed hikers on the short hike back to the bikes.

Back at the bikes, we had 30 minutes before Laconia closed. We gotta get a cookie. We quickly packed up, there was no way we weren't gonna get a salted chocolate chip cookie before starting Level 5: the ride home.

With 15 minutes to spare, cookies were acquired.

Level 5 was pretty delightful, to be honest. The evening glow on the Iron Horse was beautiful. We made it home just as dusk set, not really needing bike and headlights (we still had them). We rolled into the house, agreeing to deal with the chaos of our gear strewn about tomorrow.