Mt Maude, West face couloir - June 4, 2005
Editor's note: I just cut-and-pasted a report I wrote on the turns-all-year website, and added some pictures. I don't usually do this, but I'm lazy. Here's the movie I made, which was my true creative effort. For more reading, check out the Hummel's website.
As the weekend approached, the crappy forecast meant no "Re: Weekend?" ski emails were exchanged. Friday afternoon though, the forecast looked like it might be ok for the eastside - aw what the heck, I should get out. I fished around, and caught the Hummels who were about to make other plans, and the destination was the west face of Maude. Maude is eastside, right? (my fishing expedition would have caught Sam too, but this new-fangled email technology failed, and he didn't get the message until Monday!). We would try to ski the couloir ("West Slope" route in Beckey) that Dave and I used to climb Maude last winter. Seemed like a good plan. Though it was icy in winter, it was cool and narrow, and a reasonable pitch.
The rain gave way to clear blue skies by Lake Wenatchee, and it stayed sunny all way to the trailhead - once we got up high, we saw the "onshore flow" clouds hanging out just a couple of ridges away to the west. They seemed to push further east to the north and south of us, but left us in the clear - Glacier Peak was doing its job!
Up in Leroy Basin, the 2000ft west face couloir looked thin, with sections of missing snow, but we figured we'd give it a shot. Time for some "adventure skiing". A few hundred feet up, we reached an exciting 1 foot wide undercut snow fin above a 30 foot hole, that lead us to a rocky gap in the couloir. I was unsure about how to proceed, but Jason led the way up the 4th class 15 foot step. From here it was relatively smooth sailing to the summit.
From the summit, we peered down the north face. It looked sweet and smooth, and we toyed with the idea of getting a 1000ft run down, and climbing back out. We certainly had the time. We didn't do it though. Not because 1) we were tired, 2) the snow was still quite firm, or 3) the clouds looked like they might be coming in, but because, as Josh pointed out, 4) the clouds looked like they might be coming in, and that might make for lousy pictures by the time we started down the west face.
Once little clouds started to build around the summit, we decided it was time to go down. The top slopes were smooth sweet corn. Then as it narrowed, it got steeper and more interesting. The snow in the couloir had a sometimes funky surface, with all sorts of weird angles. The snow on the ridge to our right looked nice and smooth, and better skiing. But Josh said we had come here to "get our couloir on", so we avoided the face.
Josh side-slipped down a an off-kilter runnely section. I thought I might try to one-up a Hummel, and crank one turn. Ooops! My ski got away from me, but I managed to recover before sliding. Hmm. Then Jason came down and tried some tele turns there. His skis lost their grip and he started sliding! He slid down about 15 feet before getting his skis back in contact with the snow. Yikes! "Shit! What was that?", was his comment.
Many sweet turns ensued. The snow was just about perfect softness. Then we approached what we didn't know was the crux. The nose of snow I was descending suddenly dropped off at about 70 degrees for 6 feet. The Hummels were inching down towards me, offering words of encouragement, and so I finally slid off the edge into the pile of rocks and flatter snow at the bottom that caught me. Next was a side-slip down a 3 foot wide 45 degree finger of snow with a gap halfway down, and ending with rock closing in on both sides, and finally a change in direction to get onto the wider section below. My heart was pumping pretty good after getting through this, and I enjoyed filming the Hummels' antics when it was their turn.
Then it was time for the rocky gap, which seemed easier going down than up (buttslide). Once we crossed the softening undercut fin, it was easy turns all the way to the bottom, and we picked our way through snow and dirt down to around 6100ft.
A fun line, good times, and much better than expected weather - couldn't ask for much more!