May 3, 2006, Red Mountain

My time window was narrower than expected, and I couldn't justify 6 hours of driving up SR 20 for a day of skiing, so we went to Red Mt. instead.  The idea of a mountain of south-facing mush cooking in the sun wasn't too appealing, so we decided to get in and out before noon if possible.

It turned out to  be too early - hard frozen runnelled snow up the Sahale ropetow wasn't conducive to skinning; we booted up the trail to the forest before starting to skin. Plenty of snow in the trees and no problem crossing the stream. The main chute down the lower part of Red was filled in with hard frozen avy debris, so we skinned up the bowl looker's left, which required ski crampons to get any grip. Even with ski crampons, the uneven surface of the snow was problematic, you had to consciously put your boot on a high spot each step to keep from slipping.

We switched to booting about 1,200 ft. below the top - not all that great either, but more secure than skinning. Some guy with NBA-like stature had apparently put in a climbing track, which provided more grip than the 1-2 inches we could kick our toes in, but each step was a stretch for us short dudes and torture on the quads as well.

Skiing was hard but yielded decent turns; lower down the top inch or two was starting to soften up. We were back at the cars shortly after noon, and concluded that we could easily have slept in another two hours . . .