Skiing (Crystal Mountain, Wedge Mountain) February 9 & 10, 2002


Saturday

We were planning to head up to one of the peaks off highway 2 east of Stevens Pass. But by Saturday morning, Silas had cleverly conconcted a "wind story", about how strong the winds had been at Stevens Pass (ruining the snow), compared to Crystal Mountain. And a friend of his who had been at Crystal on Friday had said it was fantastic. Since we weren't dead set on highway 2, we decided to humour him and off we went to the Crystal backcountry.

Boy, it sure was breezy at Crystal. And what had started as a clear day, now looked kind of overcast. We were in the first bunch of people heading up to Bullion Basin. Indecisive about how best to approach the ridge crest above the basin, we could only decide on one thing - let's take a run (except Andrew!). A couple hundred feet of powder got us psyched to head on up further.

Matt and the Snow-woman on my truck!

On the way up, we caught wind (bad pun) of Silas's fear of wind. Whenever we needed to make a decision, he always piped up: "let's get out of the wind first". And at every stop: "I'm just gonna go over here and get out of the wind". Matt and I surmised that he must have had a childhood "wind trauma" of some sort. Well, this certainly wasn't Kansas.

At the ridge crest, it was so windy! We proceeded across the windward (east) side of the ridge (it was quicker skinning), being all indecisive again (there was 5 of us - hard to make any kind of decision). Finally, some of us just stopped and started deskinning. Silas wasn't overly thrilled with where we had stopped. He went and hid behind a tree.

Then some Mountaineers skied past, and one of them knocked a lot of snow down on Greg's pack and equipment. Greg subsequently lost his brand new skin bag. He was pissed!

Time to go down. Andrew, one of the "Crystal experts" headed down first, followed by Matt and I. Just below, somewhat out of the wind, I waited a couple of minutes for Greg and Silas to follow. As Greg came down, I asked him if Silas was still up there. "I dunno - I can't see him" was the answer. He should have been right in front of Greg, so I surmised he'd already gone down. I continued.

Andrew skis down towards Union Creek Click on the picture for a Windows Media video clip.

It was super sweet, lower down the wind hadn't affected the snow so much, and we skied nice steep open slopes a thousand feet down to the valley bottom, in about a foot and a half of fresh powder. Silas eventually showed up. We'd left him up there to die! haha!

We took two more runs on this slope, mostly in the sunshine, and on slightly more sheltered slopes. Some face shots were in order. Eventually we had to admit that this might have been a better choice than Stevens Pass.

For the return to the cars, we went over a peak and down what should have been a sheltered north-facing bowl. But the upper half was quite wind-scoured. At the bottom of the first bowl, we looked up at the remaining guy up top. It was Greg. He was flailing in the crust. Then, he got up, and started crankin', like a high speed crazy-man, and finished the pitch in style.

Silas and Andrew led us down to the cars via the most optimum-for-turns slopes.

At the bottom, Matt announced: "How did that snow get on your truck?" Indeed, there was a large pile of snow on my hood and windshield. It was then we realized it was in the shape of an (anatomically correct) woman. Practical jokers Dave and Emily no doubt!

I removed most of the woman before driving off, but there remained some large chunks. Matt and I found great entertainment in watching her remains melt/fly off my hood on the drive to Enumclaw. All that remained by the time we arrived at the Mazatlan in Enumclaw, was the area surrounding the part of her anatomy that rhymes with 'Dolores'. It was wedged into my bug shield, and thus was spared the effects of 60 MPH wind and engine heat.

Sunday

I must shamefully admit that I was ridiculously tired from Saturday. So a late start and an easy day were in order. Greg and I headed over to the east side to escape the impending warm storm front (arriving in early afternoon), and to perhaps check out Wedge Mountain. Going over the pass, we observed all the other people heading east to play with their toys: snowboards, downhill skis, tele skis, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, ATVs, even old bathtubs and wooden crates.

While trying to find Mountain Home Road, we had a near death experience. I stopped to turn left into a pullout, to turn my truck around (it was now obvious that we had passed Mountain Home Road). There were a series of pooly-spaced cars coming the other direction. I looked behind me, and saw a few cars way behind, at least a quarter mile back. I was near the right edge of the lane (since I had a trailer in tow, and thus needed maximum possible turning radius). I noticed that there wasn't enough room to pass me on the right, so people behind me would have to stop and wait for me if I couldn't turn soon. And due to the poorly-spaced oncoming cars, it looked like it would be a while. Oh well.

Then all of a sudden a *screech*, and a car whizzes by me at full highway speed on the shoulder, missing us by inches. Yikes! Apparently, he had not been paying attention to the road for the past quarter mile!

Greg and The Black Machine on Wedge Mountain

We found Mountain Home Road, and managed to squeeze my truck and trailer into a spot - pretty much room for only one vehicle to park. Then we were off.

The way up was great. Nice easy sledding, and easy for Greg in tow too. At 3.5 miles, we left Mountain Home Road and proceded up a logging road branch. It was a narrow steep road, basically "snowmobile single-track", and quite a lot of fun. There were a few branches, but only one at each intersection was packed down by previous sleds. Originally I was going to try to do some route-finding to get us on the best logging road, but I figured my sled might just flounder in deep snow, so I kept to where people had already gone.

We motored up the steep switchbacks through fog, and my sled had a bit of trouble on the steepest parts. Eventually, we emerged into the sunshine and gradually rose higher above a sea of clouds. The terrain was a mixture of old clear cuts and burns, I couldn't really tell. But it was open and scenic, and a maze of little valleys and ridges.

Looking down towards Snow Creek Wall from the ridge of Wedge Mountain

Eventually we came to a large flat spot on a ridge crest, with awesome views all around. I stopped the sled, and Greg announced our elevation: "4500ft". I stepped off into a foot of dry powder. Nice!

The summit of Wedge Mountain was visible off to the south, but didn't look straightforward to get to. We decided instead to continue up to the ridge crest where we were, and then ascend as far as we liked. The road continued from here, but it was through nice ski terrain, so I'd be missing out if I drove the sled any higher.

We made a long northward traverse until we intersected the ridgeline. The snow here was a little more questionable, crusty, and covered with - refrozen surface hoar? Nonetheless, it was easy travel back south along the ridge, and we had awesome views of Icicle Canyon. It looked like the storm front had reached the head on the canyon, as there were dark clouds off in the distance. Still nice sunshine here!

Greg skiing on Wedge. Click on the picture for a Windows Media video clip. - WARNING, there's a tacky soundtrack!

When things looked good, we headed down. The sun had actually begun to crust up slope aspects from due east on down south, but we were able to find sheltered powder for most of the 800ft run.

We headed up again, and ended up in a sheltered little gully of burnt trees with awesome snow. What amazed me about this place was that the terrain didn't *look* that great from far away. The trees looked a little dense, or there were too many barely-covered stumps and boulders. But I guess the scale was deceiving, because everything turned out to be so skiable! Once you got up into the "dense burnt trees", lines opened up everywhere. At that was certainly the case here. A thousand feet of powder and sunshine later, we hit the road close to the sled. I skied off to the sled. Once I got it started, Greg began skiing down.

Powder in the burn.

We continued down in this fashion for nearly another 2000 maze-like feet. Greg would stand at the edge of the road, and spot of piece of road below. When I drove by, he'd give me a nod, meaning I was to keep going, and he'd wait until he was sure that it was indeed the same road down below, then ski down the nice open slopes, and wait for me again. And repeat. I was gettin' a bit jealous!

Down at the Mountain Home Road intersection, Greg said the snow hadn't actually been that great below where the sled was parked. That made me feel a little better, but he might have been lying. Greg skied down the remaining 3.5 miles of road more quickly than I sledded it! He only needed a tow for one short hill.

From Easton back into Seattle, it was raining HARD! Full-speed wipers and poor visiblity. A deluge. Nice to be on the eastside.