January 25, 2004, Mt Catherine
1/25/04
WA Snoqualmie Pass
3256
2
Yanna and I enjoyed the free ride to the top of Hyak thanks to our Big S expanded passes after Skip suggested we do that and that he buy a nordic trail pass to cart his sorry butt up the first bit of vertical. 15 minutes from the base of Hyak, we were down crossing the bridge over Mill Creek and putting our skins on to head up the clearcut at the base of Catherine. We sure did a bit of almost horizontal on this route as we traversed from the upper right corner of the clearcut to the base of the ridge/rib that leads up to the summit ridge just to climbers left of the summit. At about the base of the rib, we were joined by a group of 2 and then another group of 4 with a chocolate lab was following close behind. What a pretty bit of steep woods. I love the knobby steeps up there. The skiing down was quite sweet - near the top I rarely felt the crust beneath, and lower down I felt it only in windier spots where the powder was more shallow. The snow was sluffing quite a bit as we skied down - definitely a day for sluff management. I saw one particularly deep sluff pull out a very small slab on a particularly steep roll (maybe close to 40 degrees on this mostly northern toward NNW aspect) but otherwise though the snow was a little slabby, it was holding tight to the crust layers.
Here's a shot of Yanna on the summit pitch that gives a sense of the conditions:
We yo-yo'd the top thousand feet and found plenty of fresh lines the second time down, which was after 11 skiers had been down this stretch (counting all skier trips at this point). So despite the somewhat crowded feeling the tour had on this day, everyone seemed to have plenty of fun. Though I think I'd save the trek out to the slope for a day when only north snow is any good any more.
Oh - on our second run, we skied down pretty close to directly from the summit, and the top was pretty nice, but we had to slide through maybe 50 vertical feet of single ski length wide slot between cliff, tree, and icy vertical snow rolls. I think I'd pass on this line w/o more snow filling in this slot.
Here's a shot of Yanna on the summit pitch that gives a sense of the conditions:
We yo-yo'd the top thousand feet and found plenty of fresh lines the second time down, which was after 11 skiers had been down this stretch (counting all skier trips at this point). So despite the somewhat crowded feeling the tour had on this day, everyone seemed to have plenty of fun. Though I think I'd save the trek out to the slope for a day when only north snow is any good any more.
Oh - on our second run, we skied down pretty close to directly from the summit, and the top was pretty nice, but we had to slide through maybe 50 vertical feet of single ski length wide slot between cliff, tree, and icy vertical snow rolls. I think I'd pass on this line w/o more snow filling in this slot.
jim_oker,
We were the party of 4 with Jelly the backcountry dog. I concur with your assessment of the conditions - it was a good day to get out.
As none of us had done it, and as skinning back up to Hyak seemed less than a fun prospect at the time, we thought we'd follow Mill Creek to the lake and take the nordic trail home. I wouldn't recommend it.
We were the party of 4 with Jelly the backcountry dog. I concur with your assessment of the conditions - it was a good day to get out.
As none of us had done it, and as skinning back up to Hyak seemed less than a fun prospect at the time, we thought we'd follow Mill Creek to the lake and take the nordic trail home. I wouldn't recommend it.
So we had two Skips up on the mountain yesterday. What are the odds of that?
I skinned back to the top of hyak for one more 1K run, which turned out to be great as there was nice soft semi-tracked with good visibility over by the trees on the left edge of the main run. Yanna and Skip just went over the low Hyak shoulder and mostly skied w/o turns in flat light down the mellow trails. I wondered about just dropping down directly to Mill Creek from the bottom of that steep run (where you guys were skiing down past us as we were skinning up for our second lap) - whether it would be open enough and have enough pitch to be worth following out as far as the clearcut. I suspect you'd want your uptrack to wind around that way if you wanted to take that as the exit route.
If it had been a year ago, Jelly could have partied with Max and Sasha, but at 10.5 they've retired from ski mountaineering. In fact, Catherine in March of last year was their last big outing - it was clear at that point that they each had some physical issues that contraindicate the postholing and hard pounding on the descents and so forth. Looks like Jelly will be at it for a while...
I skinned back to the top of hyak for one more 1K run, which turned out to be great as there was nice soft semi-tracked with good visibility over by the trees on the left edge of the main run. Yanna and Skip just went over the low Hyak shoulder and mostly skied w/o turns in flat light down the mellow trails. I wondered about just dropping down directly to Mill Creek from the bottom of that steep run (where you guys were skiing down past us as we were skinning up for our second lap) - whether it would be open enough and have enough pitch to be worth following out as far as the clearcut. I suspect you'd want your uptrack to wind around that way if you wanted to take that as the exit route.
If it had been a year ago, Jelly could have partied with Max and Sasha, but at 10.5 they've retired from ski mountaineering. In fact, Catherine in March of last year was their last big outing - it was clear at that point that they each had some physical issues that contraindicate the postholing and hard pounding on the descents and so forth. Looks like Jelly will be at it for a while...
Reply to this TR
Please login first: