Trip: Mt. Shuksan - ski from 7.8k on NF

Date: 1/26/2009

Trip Report:
I left around 8 Saturday morning, and skied a nice direct route down into the White Salmon valley - then skinned, and booted up the knarled lanch wrecked way to the col.



I continued up the clilmbers right side of the lower face on a several day faded boot pack.



At the top of this section - the steps disapeared, and I climbed my way up a 50ish dg glacial ice section to gain the snow above, I threw on the skis and skins and skinned over several dubious crevasse bridges to the conector gully which was full of blower pow. I put the pons back on and made my way up variably wind affected snow. Around 7k I found more crevasses, and several sections of exposed glacial ice - these were easily circumvented on climbers right.



Continueing up, the snow thinned and changed to hard ice/rain crust at around 7.8k. There may have possibly been more wind mank way over on climbers left, but I know I will return under fatter and more favorable conditions, so I cliked the skis on there and descended the not to bad at all snow. The fat pow in the connector gully made me smile.



Then some good pow/windcrust turns down the lower glacier to the col. I avoided most crevasse/ice shenanagins in this section by sticking to the skiiers right. Back at the col - the fall line didn't look to hot at all (debris central the entire way). So i traversed over a little to the north, and skiied my way down through the trees on generally breakable crust and mank to the valley floor. Shuksan was looking esp. pretty -



It was a short slog back to the resort and pleasent surprise to meet some fellow climbers along the way who had attempted the White Salmon, but turned around due to crappy snow conditions. Cloud cover was on the slow increase throughout the day, and lower clouds were rolling in.



I was surprised to find that my dog had escaped my motorhome and was stiring up quite a commotion at the resort, luckily all turned out well, and I picked her up just as the lifts were closeing from some nice people who had fed her sausages all day.

Today (the 26th) I went for a tour around Table Mountain and Ptarmagain Ridge. I found fabulous dust on crust in sunshine on SW faceing slopes.



I did trigger a AS-SS-R1-D1-I on a sw 40dgish roll. This is a good indication of how future snow will bond if it comes in at a similar temprature. The conditions on many aspects are a hard crust covered by about an inch of faceted snow. The shallow wind pillows were all reactive.



Then I skiied a ENE aspect on table. I found horrible breakable crust high on the slope, then crust to windbuff pow lower down.

I don't suppose you have any info on the condition of ice lines like Death Picnic from your ski around table mountain?

Ade

Ade, I'm not familiar with the ice lines in that area, although I did bump into a few stoked ice climbers in the parking lot.

Nice job! a couple of pics look different from what we saw on Sunday. Crazy how much that face changed in only one day.

Ade, you should check out the ice lines listed in the Washington Ice guide as "rumors of ice" on the Shuksan arm. There were a few lines that were in, many potential lines too given more flow. Sorry no pics though.