January 19, 2004, White Pass BC

A friend from Hood River convinced me to meet him halfway today for a little tour around White Pass.  Hopes were low as we skinned up the east ski area boundary on a moderate crust above a very strong (unbreakable) crust.  Once we neared the top of the ski area we traversed and climbed southwest through glades and clearings (roughly heading for Hogback Ridge, but looking for anything decent on the way).  Snow became much better with no surface crust, just 2 to 3" of mush on top of very hard crust.  Our high point was around 6000' and we yo-yo'ed a couple of short, north facing clearings from around 5600' to 5000'.  "Clearings" being the key word!  Sparse trees seemed to have decent snow, but as soon as the trees thickend the surface mush was gone and a very hard, icy crust was predominant.  Snow started to grab after 2 pm so we found our way back to the west side of the ski area and down.