Powder Skier

My BD .5 C4 walked into a crack on the first pitch of Stanley-Burgner on Prusik and my buddy was not able to retrieve it. If you happen to get it out let me know and I will reward with beer of your choosing.

Looking to increase my list of possible climbing partners for trips. Looking for people to go cragging in Nbend on weekdays, do alpine trips on weekends, ice climbing, touring, etc. Willing to tag along on whatever, although I would like to knock out some of the classic routes. Have car, willing to drive. Live on eastside near I-90 corridor. Have most of a trad rack, alpine gear, ice gear, ski touring gear. Not the best technical climber in the world but am in good shape. Free this weekend. Send me a PM if interested.

Trip: Chair Peak - Northeast Buttress Date: 2/12/2011 Trip Report: Vern and i decided to try Chair Peak. Snow conditions were pretty ideal. Looked like it had rained recently so there was a nice ice crust. Didn't see any tracks except on the downclimb. Ice was pliable but solid so made for easy climbing on the ice pitches. About half way up the winds kicked up and the gusts were strong enough that I had to hug the snow to keep from getting knocked over. We reached the top but didn't hang out long due to the wind. It was really bad downclimbing. Right about when we reached the lake the storm that we were trying to avoid moved in and it started raining on us for the hike back. Not so much fun, but well worth the summit. Downclimb Traverse Snowpack down low is looking fairly aweful. We saw alot of holes opening up and the snow was a slushy mess. Snowpack up around rockslide basin is pretty solid, however. Could get a couple hundred feet of good skiing if its worth the 3 mile hike in. Gear Notes: Pro: 2 snow pickets, two ice screws, piton, slings. 60m 9.8mm rope Approach Notes: Climbed up the first pitch of ice. placed an ice screw and a picket. Put a sling around the trees for the belay. Next pitch setup a snow picket for the belay station. Traversed across to the second ice pitch. Placed a solid snow picket. Set two ice screws since the ice was hollow. Slung a rock for the belay station. Put a sling around a small tree at the top. Downclimbed to the belay station that had some pitons. Rapped down over the cornice.

Leaving the car at 2am would be the key to getting the peak done in one day. We didn't realize that the road is 4 miles to the actual trail head(according to the gps). Just wanted to let people know if they didn't already. I am not sure how much snowshoes would have helped. Definitely not considering the snow conditions we ran into, but it really depends on the conditions. Personally, I dont use snowshoes but rather skins if there is enough snow to make it worthwhile. On the trip report, I was just commenting on what we experienced at the time. The conditions will probably be different this weekend considering that there has been precipitation lately. @Dave A. Thanks for the site, I will definitely have to check out Cashmere. The bowl on the west shoulder looks pretty sweet.

Trip: Dragontail Peak/Colchuck Lake - Triple Culoir Date: 2/5/2011 Trip Report: Saw some good TRs from last weekend so my buddy(Vernman23) and I thought it would be a good time to attempt the triple culoir route on dragontail peak. Our idea was to try and car to car the route with light alpine gear, which turned out to be rather ambitious. We started out at the trailhead at 6am. The kicker was that the road to the actual trailhead is closed during the winter and is only open to snowmobiles. This added another 4 miles to our trip. The snow was fairly hard which made the traveling fast. We ended up reaching the lake around 11 and started up the route about 12. Looking directly north, opposite of Dragontail peak. I am eying that bowl when we get more snow. We started the route to the right(the steps we saw were to the left). After getting past the first steep part into the culoir, we realized that we would be finishing the route in the dark. We both decided to down climb and headed over to some ice we had eyed below Aasgard Pass. Snow conditions looked good on the culoir and weather was looking good, we just didn't bring enough gear for a comfortable overnight trip. Me downclimbing the culoir. We met another guy over at the ice who had setup a TR. Ice was very hard and brittle but was fun considering there hasn't been much ice this winter. Vern climbing some ice. After doing a little ice climbing we slogged back to the car. We did the whole trip in our ice climbing boots which was rather miserable but if you can cut off the first 4 miles would be more enjoyable. Round trip we ended up doing 21.75 miles, 13hrs. Alot of work for a little ice but considering this la nina winter, it's better than sitting on the couch. Approach Notes: First 4 miles of road is closed. Highly recommend snowmobile or skins. Trail to lake is icy so mountaineering boots or some kind of traction device would be ideal. Would not recommend skinning from the road to the lake until they get alot more snow, unless you like torturing yourself.

Thanks! I haven't been up to there too often so we had to take the opportunity to ski that since the snow quality was really perfect for that line. We ended up topping out on the ridge after alot of work. Beautiful views at the top. I think we saw you two down in the basin. Looks like you got some nice turns in the pow there. What way down did you guys go? We saw some tracks going through the avy mess in the fog. We saw two other big groups going to snow lake and wasn't sure if that was them. One other guy followed us up to the bottom of the couloir and snowboarded down. Ya, we stashed some gear near a big chunk of avy debris since I was carrying way too much gear for skiing. Haven't done enough touring this year to ski with all my alpine gear. Hopefully we get some snow soon!

Trip: Alpental Valley - Shoulder of Chair Peak via Rockslide Basin Date: 1/30/2011 Trip Report: My cousin and I decided to try and climb the north face of chair peak. Considering the lack of snow and rain received in the past few weeks we were not expecting much. After skinning up the valley to rockslide basin, we found the snow to be very soft and stable. Our third climbing partner had bailed out and due to the lack of gear and the quality of snow we decided to get some turns in. We eyed a nice couloir on the east facing slope on the shoulder of chair peak. We skinned up to the bottom of the couloir where I dug a small snow pit to check the snowpack on a 50 degree slope. There was a soft layer about 8-10" deep with a small crust underneath with several feet of soft almost slushy snow under that. Top layer took alot of pressure but sheared off fairly clean. Bottom layer was solid and just compressed. We boot packed up the couloir which was slow due to the fact that there was no hard layers underneath. The snow would pretty much compress down several feet on each step. We roped up for safety's sake and did a running belay with a 30m rope and set a few snow pickets for pro starting about half way up. We skied the couloir which was fantastic. I released a small 20' slab 8" deep at the top but other than that the snow pack was solid. The snow was great until below rockslide basin where the snow became crusty. We went skiers right down some chutes. I released another small slab coming down. The layer below the top was very hard so it was a lot less stable. Skiing down into the valley was miserable due to the large chunks of snow from previous weeks avalanches. Looks like there had been some major slides recently. Sorry no pics... we both forgot our cameras. All in all not a bad trip considering the terrible conditions in the past few weeks.