Slate Peak Heat Solution

I learned last weekend at Colchuck that sleeping at 7800 feet during this hot weather is just about perfect, but I also experienced the pain of getting too and from that altitude from a parking lot at 3800 feet. BINGO! Slate Peak is the solution that lets you drive to 7000 feet for pleasant camping, and then ski DOWN from your car. It's a short season up there. My brother-in-law was the first vehicle to the Slate Peak lookout gate this year on Sunday, four days ago. While he was there, he saw another car get high centered on a snow drift. When I drove up yesterday, there was no snow on the road at all. Impassible to snow free in five days! Anyway, the skiing is fantastic right now to the north of slate peak (roughly 1000 feet of easy skiing) and we had a super relaxed and reasonable temperature two days of road skiing and parking lot sitting. Now is the time. Go get it!

Skiing below the lookout:

Sunset from the parking lot:

Morning clouds pouring into the next valley:

Snow Conditions:

Another nice thing about Slate Peak is that the crowds are low intensity. We met a handful of people over the two days we spent, and made a new friend named Lauren who is a PHD student studying wolves and cougars and who has actually tranquilized these large animals for study! What a job! Here we are with Lauren just below the lookout:

It was one of the better trips of the spring for me. Really great.