Aasgard Pass

[mattp]

Saturday and Sunday, my buddy John and I skied up over Aasgard Pass and then out via Prussik Pass and Toketie. Visibility was very poor almost the entire way, though we had some brief clearing as we crossed Prussik Pass, and even a spot of sun over near Edward Mesa. There was good snow up on the plateau, but below about 6,000 feet the snowpack was saturated and rotten isothermal.

 

The boot-path from the trailhead to Colchuck Lake was a pain in the neck so we opted to skin up rather than walk. At Colchuck Lake, we stopped for a meal and a rest before proceeding across the lake, where it looked as if all other parties were keeping to the shore for some reason we couldn't understand. Perhaps they don't share our belief that a snow-covered frozen lake in the Cascades is pretty much always safe to walk on. The slopes up Aasgard started out with perfect skinning on just a bit of soft surface snow, but became icy enough and steep higher up that we had to take the skis off and, for short stretches, scratch our way upward (as others noted last week, crampons would have been helpful here). In failing light, we set a camp on the Enchantment Plateau, and it was at this moment calm enough that we didn't bother sealing the edges of the Megamid, a mistake we badly regretted as we were lashed in the face with snow for the next two hours but too comfy in our sleeping bags to go out and do anything about it.

 

The snow conditions up on top were quite good, with enough fresh snow over a somewhat icy base to allow easy touring and turning. Nothing appeared ready to slide, and indeed the steep slope north of Prussik Pass stayed in place as we skied it one-at-a-time. The descent from Toketie Lake was brutal; in the fog we missed the route around the rib to get out of the Toketie drainage, and fought our way down Toketie Creek itself as rotten snow over steep, rocky slopes gave way to rotten snowpatches over brush and logs. A somewhat dicey log crossing at Snow Creek was a very welcome site indeed!

[dberdinka]

Nice job! Sounds like you put a mediocre weekend to good use.

[mattp]

Yeah, we had gone up there equipped for ski-mountaineering and ended up touring. Too bad we didn't have the old double cambered skis and lighter boots.

 

[philfort]

Nice... oddly, the weather may have been better around Cascade Pass than in the Stuart range this wknd. When we drove through Marblemount saturday afternoon, Hidden Lake peak, and all of Marble Ck cirque was in the sunshine, except for a little cloud on top of Eldorado (in the morning, there had been high cloud, but good vis). The lady at the bunny diner said it hadn't rained all day. Pretty annoying to see, because we spent the day in a steady moderate rain just east of Ross Lake and got soaked... weird. I wonder if anyone was up Cascade river road this wknd and can attest to the gorgeous weather it seemed to have?