Some Cascade skiin' - December 1999
Mike's visiting Seattle for the second weekend in a row, and after the previous weekend of deep Cascade slush, he ventures into the Crystal Mountain backcountry with Phil, Marcus and Dave. We ascend into a whiteout to ski about 3 inches of powder on a hard crust, with ski patrol bombs exploding around us, sounding like they're getting closer and closer.... Phil feels like a mountain hardman because 1) Mike is sick, therefore slow. 2) It is Marcus' first ski day this year, and he is out of shape from being on the East coast studying physics stuff, and he is therefore slow. 3) Dave has no skins, only waxless skis, and is therefore slow. Therefore, there is the illusion Phil is in really good shape.
Crazy Marcus ripping up the Crystal Mountain backcountry
Dave making 3 inches seem like more. 3 inches of powder, that is.
Crisp sunny morning at the Narada Falls parking lot.
We climbed up to Castle Saddle on a thin veneer of powder over ice. Sometimes that thin veneer didn't exist. The day after this trip, I bought an edge sharpener.
Once across the saddle, on the south side of the Tatoosh, things were heating up. With a seemingly stable snowpack, we decided to head down... the snow resembled corn, but not the nice ripe spring corn... more of a crusty winter corn, with suprises lurking in every shadow. The lower we got, the better it got. So we went low... over 1500ft later, we looked up in admiration of our tracks, and began the slog back up to the saddle.
The snow covered road to Reflection Lakes, with you-know-what in the background.
We climbed up the steep bowl immediately south of the Castle summit... the snow here was "crispy", but lower down, on a slightly different aspect, we found some awesome turns on mushy corn. We gave in to reason, and headed back up before the slopes lured us down any further, potentially robbing us of the strength needed to regain the saddle.
We examined a wind-protected slope north of the saddle as a potentialy descent route to the road. To evaluate snow conditions on this slope, we used the tree-branch test. Multiple applications of the tree-branch test revealed the slope contained soft powder all the way down. Mmm. (Contact Phil for details of the tree-branch test.) We carefully dug a snowpit just below the cornice and performed some more tests. We couldn't really figure out what to make of the results, so we played it cautious, and left the powder untouched.
Matt approaches Castle saddle
We descended via our ascent route. The icy skiing was "touchy" to say the least, until we got into the trees, where there was significantly more surface powder, and the turn quality improved. I stopped shortly before the route spilled out onto the Reflection Lakes road. There remained about 50 vertical feet of terrain, very chewed up because this was the narrow route by which nearly all skiers were funneled out from the Tatoosh Range (though we had seen only 1 other person all day). Instead of trying to turn through this mess, I decided to straight-run it ("figure 11"). I picked up speed very quickly. Matt, in the meantime, was making nice leisurely turns off to my right, unaware of my decision. I zipped by him and nearly collided with him. Ooops. As I picked up more speed, the messy snow soon got to me, and I found myself tumbling head over heels past trees, completely out of control. As I tumbled, time moved slowly, and I found myself pondering what sort of injuries I was going to incur. Shortly thereafter, my right ski stuck tip-first into the snow. I felt the beginnings of a twisting motion in my ankle. Stronger. Then, "pop"! My ski binding released. Only the third time that has ever happened, and the first time it was supposed to. No injuries, save for a slightly sore ankle.
Matt descending the corny south slope of the Tatoosh Range.
