Silver Star Col and Two Glasses of Burgundy SkiMo Birthday Shenanigans
Fully aware of my privileges on this weekend of my 51st Birthday. Fully aware of fact that choosing to go into the wilderness and spend the weekend carrying heavy packs and skis into the mountains on the search for snow is something that is not at all extraordinary for me and my white friends, while my fellow citizens are fearful for their lives when they walk or drive down their own streets or sleeping in their beds at home.
The original plan for my birthday weekend was to summit Glacier Peak, that plan was scrapped on Friday when the forecast went from "likely a wet and cold adventure" to "likely very dangerous conditions". The new plan, which was clearly ambitious was to head out to Silver Star Peak; bag the summits of Silver Star, Sliver Star West, Sliver Horn, Silver Moon, camp at the lake below Sliver Moon, then tag Gardner and North Gardner, camp back at Silver Moon, then ski home. We had no idea what the actual approach would be, or else we clearly wouldn't have imagined such an itinerary.
After our 9 hour approach, and being caught in a thunderstorm, and quickly making camp, we slept through the night of storms to awaken at 6am with blue skies and about 3 inches of fresh snow on the mountain.
We set off still thinking we might bag Silver Star and Silver Star West, and possibly ski the backside and tag the other Silver peaks as well. But dark clouds were brewing on the horizon. And as we climbed to the Silver Star Col, we had intermittent snow and clouds. As we reached the final pitch to the Col, visibility had dropped to only about 100ft. We stopped at the Col for a snack and to evaluate our choices.
The scrambles up to the true summit of Silver Star Peak seemed risky, the rocks were covered in fresh snow and ice. The "scramble" up to Silver Star West didn't really look like a scramble at all, and although we had a rope and harnesses, we didn't really have any beta on the actual best routes. So we decided the top of the Col would be our high point for the day. We also contemplated the back side ski, and since we couldn't see more than 100ft ahead of us, skiing a line blind into a whiteout didn't really appeal to any of us.
We knew the ski back to camp would be fun if the visibility improved, so we waited a bit and then finally set off to ski the top couple pitches by Braille. We saw a solo skier on his way up about 500ft from the top of the Col and he said he'd left his car only 4 hours earlier. Insane! He is either superhuman, has some secret path that avoids the bushwhack, or can't tell time... or maybe all three.
The visibility improved and we enjoyed excellent turns for the 2000ft back to camp. After another quick snack and discussing our plans we decided to go back out for another couple hours of skiing and decided to ski the Burgundy Col and the steeper narrower Couloir lookers right of Burgundy. Both were awesome skis and we left no fresh snow for anyone to follow us up.
All in all it was some amazing skiing despite not being our original plan.
Silver Star Creek Trail
I was pleasantly surprised to see an actual trail to start out the adventure. The large packs and tons of blowdown still made it interesting.