• Distance: ~11 miles (13 because we went up and down twice)
• Elevation: 5,000ft gain, 8,321ft highest point
• Weather: 40’s and rainy, 60’s and sunny
• Commute from Seattle: don’t look 4:41 with no traffic
• Did I Trip: Nope!! Slipped on skins a bit in slush but no faceplants thank you very much

We started booting it up the trail, skis strapped to packs. The trail was low grade, pleasant, winding through green forest with intermittent sunshine and drizzle. Wildflowers were out! You could smell the pine needles in the air. We started to panic. Where the hell was the snow? We thought it was a 3 mile approach to the lake and it had been almost two hours. Shit. A) we’re still not at the lake and B) Where. Is. The. Snow. What if there is no snow?! The guy before us in the trail register said his destination was “snow!” but he never confirmed whether he found it or not! Oh god.

Luckily we ran into patchy snow and consistent snow soon after (~5,500ft). We continued to boot it because I’m too lazy (stubborn?) to transition and the snow was perfectly consolidated for booting. You finally break into sparse trees, but wait! There’s another like 600ft to the lake, and you have to make it a rising traverse from left to right or you’ll cliff out. It went on forever. Probably because the sun was setting, the approach was a solid mile longer than we thought, we were carrying skis because of my stubbornness, and you know when your’e so close yet so far? It was like that.

We finally got up to the lake just at twilight. The top of the peak was in clouds and we booted out to a rock patch on the other side of the lake to have a better starting point. I popped up my tent while Brad set up his bivy. I enjoyed a hot meal of chicken chili, first dehydrated meal of the year I think! I’ve barely camped! I boiled some water so I’d have a hot nalgene, and went to sleep. And slept like a baby. At least, once everything dried. The first hour was a little damp from the drizzle.

My first alarm went off at 3:30, but the peak was still socked in by clouds and it was drizzling yet again so I turned it off and went back to sleep. The second alarm was at 4:30, and I dozed for 15 minutes before asking Brad if he wanted to give it a shot anyway. We started up just after 5, and holy crap it was the right choice. The clouds lifted and cleared as we got higher, and by the time we summitted it was blue skies and views! It’s a very straightforward snow walk up to the top from the lake. I stopped skinning halfway up because I was getting weirdly anxious skinning on crust and felt better in boots. Brad amazed me with his skinning confidence on the ice until I realized he had been wearing freaking ski crampons the whole time. Dammit Brad.

We walked the “ridge” to the summit and savored the views for probably an hour. Scanned all the names in the summit register to see who we recognized, snapped pictures in every direction, mocked my friends with pictures because I had Alpine Verizon cell service, took some naps… gotta kill time until the crust turns to corn. We finally got impatient and I decided I’d just boot it down if it was still crusty. Ugh. So not stoked. So Brad switched to skis as I booted down the ridge.

Except by the bottom of the ridge, the crust was getting softer. And 100ft below that, it was feeling a little corny. And Brad shouted back up to me. It only gets better!! I stopped and clicked into my skis. Bring on the corn baby!

The ski back to camp was phenomenal. Hero corn (with a few patches of crust here and there) which makes you feel like an amazing skiier. And straight down the line of fall, at least for the most part. We were back at camp within minutes. We packed a little bit, had some snacks, and realized it wasn’t even 10am. Do you… what if we… we should go up again. Maybe just to the rocks below the ridge. It would be a waste to get back to the trailhead at like 11am. And so I skinned all the way up this time, breaking trail through slush (Brad’s crust crampon trail was too steep). I had second-summit-fever and wanted to ski off the top this time. I waited for Brad for a bit but didn’t see him, though I did meet the only other person in the area who was headed for the Northeast couloir of Abernathy, a dope ski that I’ll shred in my dreams but never in real life. He had been hoping to ski down that side and then hit up Gardner and North Gardener, never did hear if he was successful. They’re melting out fast.

I finally just switched to downhill mode and took off to find Brad. I made my first turn and immediately set off a small slab avalanche that went right out from under my feet along with a shit ton of sloughing, which ran for a few hundred feet down a gully that was not part of the standard route, thank god. The slab was barely 8′ across so I ski cut the rest of the slope to send whatever else was left on its way and headed back down the way I came up. Spring skiing! After mildly shitting myself I skiied the lowest angle terrain back to Brad, who was just above the only other section I was concerned about. I told him what had happened and that we were doing this one in shifts. I skiied down to a tree patch that was out of the way if he set anything off. No more slab, but plenty of large sloughing rollerballs to ski through. I waved him down and we skiied the next section separately until we were on mellow terrain, where we cruised back to camp once again.

This time we decided to officially head down, since it probably wasn’t going to get much better up there. 2,000ft of turns isn’t too shabby for one morning.

We skiied more on the way down. I switched to downhill mode for the traverse down from the lake but left the skins on thinking we’d have flatter skinning ahead. Brad started down in walk mode. I passed him. Brad switched to downhill mode and took skins off. Brad passed me. I lost a skin and had to trek back up to get it. I put the skin back on my ski (why, Eve?!) and went back into walk mode. I practiced my telemark turns and grumbled about everything steeper than 20 degrees. We ran out of snow pretty quickly though, and switched back to booting it. Oh god. My feet. The hotspots were fine when moving, but getting moving after stopping for a few seconds was brutal. Oh, and Brad lost a ski strap. And then I broke a buckle on his pack. But hiking a few miles of what was basically summer trail with heat and sunshine and wildflowers… damn if it isn’t beautiful.

I’m stumped (ha) by the tree on the left. I stopped dead in my tracks because it’s like a weeping willow, except it’s a conifer. It has pine needles. Those aren’t broken dropping branches, they just grow like that. I don’t know anything about the flora out here and I’m super curious what this is because I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it. Between this and the wildflowers and the dappled sunlight and the soon-to-be-stifling heat, it felt like July. It was hard to believe that we had just been making turns on several feet of consistent snow and that it was only mid May. Shoulder season is the best.

We popped back out at the trailhead around 1pm and went straight to Winthrop for burgers and cold beer. Ahhhh. And we enjoyed them at Old Schoolhouse Brewery, which is right on the river. I’m getting my Mazama cabin someday, just you wait. Maybe in 30 years after I’ve paid off this house. 2048. I’ll have a jumping off point for everything in the northeastern Cascades, the one corner I barely touch. Imagine coming from a sweet peak like this back to your log cabin by the river on a sunny day, it’s not even fair. Spectacular area out there, and just as wild as the west side.