[TR] Shuksan - White Salmon Glacier 2/25/2017

[geosean]

Trip: Shuksan - White Salmon Glacier

 

Date: 2/25/2017

 

Trip Report:

Me and Thatcher had a sorry attempt on Shuksan via the White Salmon this weekend. Thought I would post for some conditions beta and to hopefully kickstart some conversation... the trip reports have been few and far between on here.

 

We started in the uber-dark from the ski lodge. There was about 4" of excellent powder and not as much crust underneath as I expected.

 

The ski down to the valley bottom went well (a couple of falls but nothing major) with good coverage all the way down. The valley bottom also had good coverage except that all the creeks opened up after the warm and rainy spell.

 

We were making good time up to about 4700' when the clouds we had been watching to the north quite quickly rolled in and it started snowing pretty solidly. We for some reason thought it was here to stay and turned tail like little girls and ran. We did have good skiing down which was part of the reason to flee.

 

By the time we were skinning back up the trees to the ski area the sun was back out and all was blue above. We both agreed that this was probably the worst decision we had ever made in the mountains. It looked like the weather was good long enough to make the summit. Though later in the afternoon the storm did roll in so we wondered how the descent would have been in the whiteout.

 

We finished off the day by skiing up over Table and down the lower part of Little Alaska.

 

I would love to hear how it went for the other group that kept going up; sorry we stopped breaking trail.

 

Gear Notes:

Usual... including parking lot beers.

 

Approach Notes:

Good coverage, skiing the "clearcut" was better than expected but still not good.

[geosean]

Ha, just saw your report on TAY, nice job Pierce, glad you guys had a good trip. Sorry for the skin track back, we thought we were following somebody else's but turned out we were deranged with regret!