WA Pass Opening Weekend (not the Birthday Tour)

WA Pass opening weekend! I had two great days up there, doing some exploring around the Kangaroo Wallaby area.

On Saturday, we did the "Backdoor Bangaroo" tour. It starts on Kangaroo Ridge, climbing up "Life is Good" gully near Half Moon, and snaking through the Kangaroo Temple. Our goal was to inspect the long 1800 ft west facing couloir just north of the northwest peak of Gilbert that connects North Creek to upper Twisp River headwaters. It does, in fact, go. It felt like we were "sneaking through the backdoor" into the familiar grounds of Kangaroo Pass and the Birthday Tour. Overall, the snow quality sucked on this tour but it was really fun terrain and gave us some great beta for Sunday...

On Sunday, we started by ascending Wallaby Peak from Kangaroo Pass. We then skied a thin slanting couloir on the south face of Wallaby. Returned to the summit of Wallaby and skied "The Bong", a steep east facing line towards Half Moon that we had checked out from below the day before. Then "Life is Good" gully and skinned up to the backside of the north couloir of Big Kangaroo. We climbed the North Couloir and pondered skiing it, but the icy 50 degree choke deterred us. The final 3k descent of Big Kangaroo to the hairpin was incredible, quite possibly the best corn run of my young ski career.

Detailed trip reports:

https://climberkyle.com/2021/05/08/backdoor-bangaroo-ski-tour/

https://climberkyle.com/2021/05/09/life-is-good-ski-tour/

I tried to use the established names for lines where they existed, but information can be vague. I could not find any information about the "Backdoor", but its relatively insignificant position made it hard to research.