[TR] Rock Mountain - West Face 2/21/2010

[AlpineK]

Trip: Rock Mountain - West Face

 

Date: 2/21/2010

 

Trip Report:

Recently I have been going through my too-do list and knock off stuff I keep meaning to ski but then forget or blow off. Rock Mountain was on the list. I have been up to ski the south side a couple times, but never the west side. The main problem with the west side was linking up the ascent with the decent. Long ski outs along Hwy 2 are just not that inspiring. The Berdorfer description suggests starting from Smith Brook. That avoids the highway but adds miles to the trek.

 

Jeff H and I talked about it and figured we could ski a loop starting at the east portal of the train tunnel. We figured we would go to the ridgeline and figure it out.

 

Ascent in red descent in blue

 

Ascent up the south facing slopes went smoothly until the ridgeline. Going off old memories, we thought we could stay on the ridgeline, but this did not look like such a good idea once we got there. In the end, we descended the ridges north side a ways to a bench and then traverse. We saw a steep chute that regained the ridge.

 

South side of the ridge

 

View of Rock Mountain from the ridge.

 

Traversing took a while. We got sidetracked once when we thought we could regain the ridge early, but eventually we climbed the chute we'd been looking at. After some more travel we were on the summit

 

Looking back at the traverse under the ridge.

 

Glacier Peak

 

The skiing is cool on a big wide open face that drops for a couple thousand feet.

 

Here's the YouTube version

[video:youtube]

 

 

 

We skied to a flat section then descended and traversed till we were under a notch in Nason Ridge. After a short climb we were on the ridge crest looking down at HWY 2 as the sun was beginning to set. More skiing followed. It was more along the lines of tree dodging then nighttime tree dodging.

 

Fortunately we had a good lay of the land, and we could hear the tunnels electric fan engines running. Eventually we were back to the road and car.

 

 

 

Approach Notes:

Climbing up from near the summer trail may be better, but if you do that either take two vehicles or only ski this when there's a good snow pack in the valley. If you ski the route make sure to check avy conditions since you'll be in avy terrain for a while.

[mattp]

I bet that "tree dodging" on the slope back down to highway 2 is an understatement, eh K? I skied it ten years ago, with much more snow cover than now, and it was somewhere betweeen challenging and trying then.

[Pete_H]

How was the skiing? Looks cornish.

[AlpineK]

Up high we were skiing powder with a sun crust. The lower you got the thicker the crust got.

 

Yeah maybe I should have said thick tree dodging. For the first bit you could link up some glades, but lower down vine maples took up a lot of space in the, "glades." Darkness didn't help either

[JoshK]

Nothing like tree dodging in junky snow in the dark. "Character building" to say the least. Looks like a great ski though!

[telemarker]

Cool photo of the W. Face of Rock. Love the summit view, year 'round it's great. Nice TR! Do you think just skinning back up the W. face, traversing towards the summer trail on the S. side would have been just as challenging?

[rat]

nice tr. i have often wondered about that approach from the east portal.

 

skinning back up the west face then descending the drainage immediately west of the summer trail works well when avy hazard is reasonable...an up/down two-fer.

 

 

 

 

[E-rock]

Kurt,

Great trip report. I have a map of this area that I bought right before moving away. Always wanted to ski that face, it looks like such a great fall-line descent.