May 2, WA Pass - Blue Lk Col
5/15/08
WA Cascades East Slopes North
2155
2
Amar's description of this tour on opening day applied to day 2 as well. I was pleasantly surprised to find blue skies on Friday morning and the snow conditions held up well from the day before. A little to add to Amar's fine report:
I continued up to the col from the top of the Blue Lk basin - mostly for the views since the snow conditions on that steep pitch to the col didn't look all that inviting, but I wanted to see the view since I'd never been up there before. Watched as a party of three descended from the shoulder of the peak across the Copper Ck basin (Stilletto, I think) - very nice! Met Gary and his very energetic dog, Blaze, at the col and decided to ski down the backside into the Copper Ck drainage then back up to the col (about 1:30-2pm). Snow was a little soft, with some chunky avy debris in places, but the high clouds and breeze that picked up in the late morning kept it from getting too mushy and unstable. The ski down the north side of the col wasn't great - almost powder, but the frozen chunks scattered about made it a bit of a challenge.
The skiing through the sparse trees in the basin was by far the best of the trip - perfect corn all the way to the bottom of the open slopes (watch for glide cracks in the final pitch to the valley bottom though)!
One sidenote for anyone interested in the Whistler Couloir: the slopes surrounding it are still sluffing a lot of chunky debris into the chute. Looks like it'll take a bit of melt/freeze to smooth things out, but there's plenty of snow in there to make it "go" for a while.
Lots of other mtn pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/rcmizen/WAPass02May08
I continued up to the col from the top of the Blue Lk basin - mostly for the views since the snow conditions on that steep pitch to the col didn't look all that inviting, but I wanted to see the view since I'd never been up there before. Watched as a party of three descended from the shoulder of the peak across the Copper Ck basin (Stilletto, I think) - very nice! Met Gary and his very energetic dog, Blaze, at the col and decided to ski down the backside into the Copper Ck drainage then back up to the col (about 1:30-2pm). Snow was a little soft, with some chunky avy debris in places, but the high clouds and breeze that picked up in the late morning kept it from getting too mushy and unstable. The ski down the north side of the col wasn't great - almost powder, but the frozen chunks scattered about made it a bit of a challenge.
The skiing through the sparse trees in the basin was by far the best of the trip - perfect corn all the way to the bottom of the open slopes (watch for glide cracks in the final pitch to the valley bottom though)!
One sidenote for anyone interested in the Whistler Couloir: the slopes surrounding it are still sluffing a lot of chunky debris into the chute. Looks like it'll take a bit of melt/freeze to smooth things out, but there's plenty of snow in there to make it "go" for a while.
Lots of other mtn pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/rcmizen/WAPass02May08
Thanks for the report Rob, especially Whistler couloirs, I was just talking about that last night.
Snoslut, snoslut's buddy Dave and myself attempted the Whistler Couloirs on Saturday and were shutdown. We got a later start than we should have so the snow was too soft by the time we started and we were skinning in slurpee snow. We decided to keep going to the skiers left chute and decide what to do from there. The chute was full of avy debris, but we decided to try booting up it anyway to see how it was. The booting was OK, although slow, but the debris was bad enough that the ride back down would have been brutal. So we decided to bag it and try again another time. We were a bit less than half way up the chute when we decided to call it. Here's a photo to show a little of the debris.
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