May 4, 2008, Rainy Pass, Lake Ann

Dammit, you're not supposed to post photos like the E. Face of Liberty Bell on a skiing website!  I hear my rock shoes calling me.

Cool photos!

Nice meeting you guys up there today. We hemmed and hawed about whether to go on to Maple Pass after you guys left but as we headed higher to check out the traverse route, found rapidly worsening snow conditions with about 8-10 inches of ski penetration in mushy snow and decided it wasn't worth the risk. From our turnaround point, however, we spied the ridge running northeast from Heather Pass up to Point 6937 and thought it looked like a nice, protected way to get up to some views and some turns. We dropped back down to the pass then headed up the ridge. Skinning was significantly better than on the way up to Maple with a very firm base underneath and we grabbed some great panormas from the top. The ski back down to the pass had some good corn in spots but was quite variable in others. Like you, we dropped down through the trees from Heather Pass to Lake Ann but managed to set off a mess of sluffs. By that time, just about everything was sliding. Only the top 4-5 inches were going and moving slowly and the base underneath was almost as mushy what we had been skiing already. By the time we skied out across the lake, it looked like there had been slides from the south-facing slopes above the lake over just about every stretch of the upper trail traversing that slope that we all used in the morning.

Amazing how fast conditions went to pot today.

Great photos Jay!

It's too bad that the snow didn't hold for day 2 but it looks like the weather was a good consolation prize. 8)
I wish that it had worked out for me to join you but it sounds like you may need to get back up there in a couple of weeks anyhow.