January 14, 2007, Silver Peak

Ed, Mark, and I booted up the West Side of the North Ridge of Silver Peak.  From the car at 1900 ft, 3400 ft off the Annette Lake trail and to 4600 ft on the North end of the ridge there were 2 to 4 inches of down feathers on a very wide spread hard crust.  Was only kicking a couple inches into the crust much of the way above the trail.  Skiing off the ridge into the North end of the cold North Bowl was real good with maybe 5 inches of power under surface hoar.  After skinning up the bowl one had to edge or boot up to the saddle near its South head.  A lot of scrapping was heard down the bowl and back to the trail.  The pass was sparkling under the sun which made up for the crust.