March 15, 2008, Cannon Mt. Couloir

We headed over Steven's pass Friday night with our sights on the Cannon Mountain Couloir.  We arrived at the end of Icicle Creek road pretty late and decided to skin up the forest service road to the Mountaineers Creek Trailhead to spend the night.  The moon was out which made the 3+ mile skin beautiful and our headlamps stayed in the pack.  In fact, we could see the couloir and much of the approach route for the next day through the old burn in the moonlight. 

We got a late start in the morning after cooking a leisurely breakfast and headed up the old logging road right out of the trailhead parking lot.  We started skinning up through the burned trees near the big washout and continued up to point 6475 where we could drop over the ridge to the base of the couloir.  The dead forest was pretty amazing to skin through - just us and the occasional sound of woodpeckers.  But after a while it felt relentless, and the crust under about 2-3 inches of new snow made our climb pretty challenging and slow.  The sun came out here and there, but never made too strong of showing.  After a short ski down from the ridge, we switched over to crampons and booted up the couloir through snow that varied from thigh deep to an unbreakable crust.  It started getting a little windy and cold when we got to the top, so we didn't hang around long.  We could see the true summit of Cannon and the couloirs that folks skied down last week - needless to say we were very impressed with the loop over Aasgard and Prusik pass that you guys did.  We could also see Leavenworth and the thought of burgers and fries crossed our mind more than once.  The top of the couloir was crusty in places and had some shallow wind slabs in others - cut a couple and sent them rolling.  The pitch was consistent all the way down and the skiing was definitely fun, but it seemed like every turn was different.  Two inches deep one turn, and twelve inches the next - all on top of a pretty firm crust.  We skied out the gut and traversed back to the old logging road and bashed our way through the brush.

We had plans of skiing up around Cashmere the next day, but the burgers beckoned so we packed up and sped back down the logging road.  The south faces down low were looking pretty patchy as well.  Just our luck, we had a couple of Guinness's waiting for us in the car.  Even with all of the traversing, this was fun route, and we didn't see a soul all weekend let alone a ski track that wasn't our own. 

A few more pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/peter.spruance/CannonMountainCouloirMarch152008