Alisse

That bear looks skinny! Beautiful photos (yes, as always).

@JasonG Oh! That must be the southern Pickets to the north of Shuksan, then! I didn't post the pic of what I think is Black and Goode in my original post: Thank you for your mountain identification assistance 😀

Trip: Silver Star Mt - North side Trip Date: 05/12/2018 Trip Report: Celebrated Hwy 20 opening by heading east for a wonderfully beautiful trip up Silver Star! Had to carry skis for ~40 minutes from the pullout but then great skinning conditions all the way up! Put on the ski crampons around 5200' and kept them on until the col. Ultra mega hyper super happy place Views just got better and better and it was fun and interesting seeing Vasiliki Ridge, Burgundy Col and the Wine Spires from the east -- I'd been on that side just once in an aborted attempt to climb the East Face of Chablis in July 2014 (meeeemories....🎶), it was very cool to be on skis this time! Booted up on snow from the col to the final summit block, a chimney move with a useful rap station to yank on. Fantastic views, I think I saw the Twin Sister Range? And Black and Goode and Glacier and what I think was Dome? Oh yeah, then the skiing. Skiied from the summit block (ok, mostly side-slipped but did make a few turns between rocks).. The snow was AMAAAAZING, truly, for most of the descent, and then it got heavy and slushy. I kept my skis on for perhaps too long, having fun in the woods trying to stay on snow and avoiding logs and dirt. Finally after I hit the second rock I decided to give up. A wonderful day in the mountains, love the blue skies and sweet snow! 😍 Gear Notes: Ski crampons and whippet 👍 Approach Notes: Follow the creek!

Wow! Fell hip-deep in a crevasse! Glad it wasn't worse. Nice pics!

Bump

Sold

Nice! Looks beautiful. Only one face plant, good work!

@JasonG Let me know when you want to go climb it again ☺

I also like my sleep @JasonG but with the freezing level being so high for so long, we wanted to be up top early. A lot of this route is on a ridge, though, on very moderate slopes. I guess you might already know that. Looking at maps, it could definitely have been Hozomeen, but it looked further away? Here's a pic:

Trip: Ruby Mountain - North side Trip Date: 05/07/2018 Trip Report: After many phone calls and texts and posts on many forums, I successfully found a poor victim a partner for skiing Ruby yesterday! Thank you Chris!! I woke up at 12:15 AM and drove to meet Chris at the Gorge Lake Campground, we carpooled from there over to the highway closure/Ross Lake Resort trailhead. We left the car at 3:45 AM to take our skis for a bit of a walk up the snow-free trail. We had an OK time route-finding through the forested hillsides and probably couldn't have done it much faster even with a more direct line. We ended up starting to skin around 4,000' if I remember correctly. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!!! The weather was a bit cloudier than expected (but that was a good thing for the snow/avy concerns). Google Photos auto-stich! A little off, but I'll take it.. Once we were supposedly in sight of Ross Lake, the lake and surrounding mountains were completely socked in -- but eventually it opened up quite a bit more and we got some good views! The cornice was not as threatening or overhanging as it could have been. We got up to the summit at 9:00 exactly. The summit repeat/antenna thing was weird. We saw a box of cartridges at the top and wondered about that. What I think must have been Redoubt Glacier -- WOW. And I saw a very big, far-off mountain that I thought maybe was Slesse, but it was too far east to be Slesse. Not sure. Directly north of us. There were sort of mixed reviews/experiences for the latest ski trip reports coming out of the general area, so I was keen to see what we would encounter (maybe, somehow, possibly there would be amazing frozen snow on the way up?). It ended up being a sort of mediocre wet kind of snow that was sticky but not as bad as it could have been! Not terrible for skinning, not terrible for skiing. The line that we took down was conservative -- we stayed on the ridge that we took to ascend, mellow terrain. Just one little slough that turned into a really small loose wet. No roller balls sighted, one natural tiny loose wet slide off the rocks far, far away from us. We took a better way down through the woods and found that we could have been skinning from around 3,300'.... not too much slide alder/open creek to contend with right now. Somehow I lost my little metal loop thing off my ski boot (for the leash) and also the plastic protector thing for my whippet! Not sure how that happened. I failed at LNT... We got back to the car at noon. It was full-on sunny and beautiful and Colonial and friends (and all the rest) were looking so good! Chris just happened to have some Pacifico beers in a cooler (!) in his car and that was a great way to end things. This trip fed my soul!!! Thanks to a different Chris (https://chasingmastery.com/) for the GPX track :-) Lessons: - Don't plan on wearing ski boots for the entire thing and then as you leave the car decide not to do that, and decide to start on in the Chacos that you have on your feet. Don't try to switch back into the Chacos while you're still on steep duffy forest slopes. Gear Notes: Carried aluminum crampons but did not need them one iota Approach Notes: Follow your nose south :-)

Yep. No dice. 😒 And now the weather trend for that day is worsening. Ho hum... Weather/partner anxiety is getting to me.

Guess I need to reactivate Facebook to find partners 😭😭

Serious price drop - trying to get rid of these before moving!

@JasonG thanks! I'm prepared 😎

I have absolutely no use for these and don't know what to do with them. In Seattle. Let me know if you want them!

There's a recent Enchantments traverse TR on Turns All Year, might have your answers!

I have the day off. I've asked approximately 8 people I know but no one has committed yet. Anyone out there free/interested?

@JasonG thanks. Yes, WildSnow is great!

I get a security error message when I click the link. Anyone else getting that?

This is great! My skins are in great shape right now but I'm going to email this to myself for when they need to be reglued. Any tricks for getting a smattering of pine needles, etc. out of the glue? I've just been using tweezers, often.

Funny that you post this; one of my friends had to fashion exactly that on Sunday! I'm thinking I should get a second ski strap for this possibility! Maybe the booty gods will help me out... Hose clamp? Pardon my lack of imagination, but how have you used that? Thanks 😊

@Bronco @JasonG off-topic, but on longer/more committed ski tours, what kinds of tools (if any) do you bring? I guess the question is..what is most likely to break with tech bindings/skis/boots/poles? Or maybe this question is too specific to models... I have a little relatively lighy multitool, but I'm not sure if I could get away with something lighter... Thanks in advance!

There's about a foot and a half of snow out of the parking lot. I took a lot of photos but they're on my camera and I don't have a way here at home to upload them. I'll post a few once I get them off the camera.

Trip: Mount St Helens - Worm Flows Trip Date: 04/22/2018 Trip Report: One million of my best friends and I were on MSH today. We left the Marble Mountain SnoPark at 3:30 AM, able to ski from the parking lot! I got a whole lot of practice with my ski crampons! Up to the crater rim a bit past 9, hung out in the sun for about an hour and a half, then skiied some amazing AMAZING snow -- ah yes, this is what they call corn -- under a bluebird sky!!!!!!! I love spring skiing!!! I got to ski most of it in a tank top and rolled-up pants. 😁😁😁 Got a little sticky toward the bottom of the fun, but not too bad. On a few of the steeper parts we skiied, we saw some rollerballs and one very small wet loose slide. What an amazing day!!! So much better than hiking Monitor Ridge in August! Gear Notes: Sunscreen, ski crampons, patience Approach Notes: Snow from the TH!

I could google this, but this is more interesting! Other than completely drying the skins, trying to pick pine needles etc out of the glue, re-cheat-sheeting and rolling them loosely to store, do you do anything else to extend the life of your skins? Someone once mentioned some washing, but I didn't look into it. My new-in-December BD skins are starting to feel...fuzzy in a certain way. I want them to last!! Thanks :-)