Jan 13-15 2007, Preacher Mtn couloirs (updated 2022)
Updated December 2022. When all the old/original TAY trip reports moved to the new format, this one got really mangled - half the text was lost and I think all but one of the picture links broke. Finally decided to dig through my old backups and repost the text and relink the pictures. Hope this helps others who want to head out towards Preacher Mountain and are looking for some beta. Cheers!
Preacher Mtn is about six miles NW of Alpental...the last named peak before the Pratt and Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie join together and snub off the chain of peaks that includes Roosevelt and Chair Peak.
While doing a tour up around Roosevelt and Wright Mtns last spring I saw Preacher Mtn and two distinct couloirs on its southeast side that I really wanted to get back and ski.
Preacher Mtn and the two chutes (pic from April 2006)
New Years weekend there was good enough weather and Kirsten, Nate, Becky and I were up for heading in there to try skiing them. Despite good weather and a three day weekend, the short days, lengthy routefinding, and not camping far enough in on the first day caused us to only get to the base of the chutes...we were tantalizingly close, but had to settle for skiing some other fun chutes above Upper Wildcat Lake and only taking pictures of the Preacher chutes, hoping that the weather might cooperate over MLK weekend for another shot.
Amazingly enough the weather did cooperate this weekend,so the four of us, with our friends Marcus and Anastasia took off Saturday morning hoping for better luck this time. The ski in went much faster than two weeks ago, and we were able to camp at Lake Caroline instead of our previous camp at Lower Wildcat Lk. The skiing and skinning on open slopes was good, 6-12" of variable dust on crust...the skinning on steeps or travel through trees was ugly, ski crampons were handy, sometimes boot crampons were necessary to deal with the boilerplate rain crust.
Sunday morning Kirsten, Nate, Becky, and I left camp at dawn heading for the chutes. Marcus and Anastasia opted to explore other slopes around Lake Caroline they had their eyes on. A quick 700vf descent through boot deep powder (with the occational patch of horrid rain crust when we got too near the trees) brought us to Hatchet Lake where we toured around to the most accessible ridge we found last time between Hatchet and Derrick Lakes. Skinning was worthless, so we cramponed up through the trees and gained the ridge. From the ridgecrest we began the slow work of skis on, skis off, bobbing and weaving between the two sides of Preacher's east ridge. Eventually we were past spots that had rather ugly, steep runouts and were skinning along the beautiful rolly polly terrain of the NE side of Preacher's upper bowl.
Four hours after leaving camp we were at the top of chute 1. There were two entrances...the first left us really disappointed as the entrance was shiny, rough, raincrust all the way across, but we booted around to the second entrance where there was fortunately just enough sastugai and dust on crust to allow for an easy entrance. The rest was fantastic...granted the snow wasn't perfect, but the top 3/4's of the couloir was shaded enough from the sun that it still had boot/calf deep powder and you didn't even touch down on the old raincrust. The bottom 1/4 was ugly...we'd seen that it was choked with avy debris on the approach that morning, but we were in the sun by then and it was possible to gorilla stomp some turns through the debris. The last few hundred vf were back in the shade and powder.
It was mid-afternoon and we were getting tired, but chute 2 was waiting. We ate some lunch and rallied...skins back on heading for the next chute. This one had been in the shade most of the day and had only a few spots of avy debris and suncrust, and much more consistent powder. We couldn't see a way to tour around to the top of this one, so we just booted it. An hour before dark and we pointed our skis downhill. Chute 2 was just as much fun as the first.
We rolled in to camp just before dark and promptly slept for about twelve hours.
Monday morning the six of us broke camp and skinned across the saddle that divides Lake Caroline from Upper Wildcat Lake. One final chute to ski, this one was just started to get cooked in the morning sun.
chute above Upper Wildcat Lake
From Upper Wildcat Lake we dealt with a cornucopia of challenges...skins icing up and failing off, more attempts to skin on boilerplate in the trees, and even a catastrophic failure of the metal dynafit heel hardware on brand new Scarpa AT boot (voile straps can make a fantastic boot-to-ski retainer in a pinch when the dynafit heel clip falls off a boot). But we were all back at Alpy by mid-afternoon happy to not spend another night out in the frigid temps.
Way to nail a sought after line, Pete.
And a commendable trip given the temps you faced.
Marcus and Anastasia opted to explore other slopes around Lake Caroline they had their eyes on.
Heh! :) That's a very nice way of saying that Marcus and Anastasia were too tired to get up and keep it going all day with y'all. Nice work! That's some beautiful terrain in there and many pretty lines left for the taking. That NE face of Preacher looks as good as I thought it would. Glad to keep y'all company at base camp and help divide up the trailbreaking for the hump in there.
Thanks again for sharing,
John
Preacher Mountain Couloirs
A couple highlights:
traversing below the east ridge of Preacher
Final icey slopes up to the couloir entrance
Pete skiing the central couloir toward Hatchet Lake
Thanks for researching and organizing this trip, Pete! It was really cool getting to know such a spectacular and remote area so well.
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