May 16, 2002, Snoqualmie Mountain, Snoqualmie Pass

Constrained on both ends of the day by child-care duties, Nick, Mike and I opted for this close-by and relatively short trip. We started hiking from the Alpental Road on the climber's left of Commonwealth Creek, climbing into Commonwealth Basin and then up to the Guye-Snoqualmie saddle. Plenty of snow everywhere (the ski areas don't even have any bare spots yet!), and the snow in the forest was neither excessively dirty nor chunky/icy. From the saddle we skinned to the base of the steep south ridge of Snoqualmie Mountain and then up it. With the clear skies and warm sun the steepest south-facing slopes had gotten somewhat mushy (pole plant easily went into the top 1 foot of granular snow), but still stable enough. Above about 5500' the snow became (mostly) walkable crust, and we went back to booting up. Spectacular views from the summit (Baker, Glacier, Stuart, and Rainier were all visible), and especially impressive was the amount of snow still left, considering it is mid-May. There had been a lot of recent avalanche activity on the slopes of surrounding peaks, and NE-NW aspects were especially trashed (eg Alpental peaks), so much so that there was little unaffected snow left in some areas.

The ski down was enjoyable, a long series of rolls going down the ridge, at first on a firm corn surface coated with a little recent new snow and then in the deeper mush. On the steepest section near the bottom of the ridge one of my turns set off a surface slide which threatened to sweep my skis out from under me on the next turn, but I managed to stay upright as the slide passed. The ski from the Guye-Snoqualmie saddle down through the old-growth forest to the flats of Commonwealth Basin was reasonable, and only unpleasant where turns had to be made in old hole-filled avalanche debris which had come down from Guye Peak. We were able to ski all the way to the car.

There are some photos from this trip here.

Charles