[TR] Tombstone Pass, Oregon - Cone Peak & Iron Mountain 1/30/2016

[Dave7]

Trip: Tombstone Pass, Oregon - Cone Peak & Iron Mountain

 

Date: 1/30/2016

 

Trip Report:

It has been a while since I posted a TR, I figured I would post one and give a quick update on conditions in the OR Cascades.

 

I have been in graduate school for the past year and half which has been a good opportunity for meeting new people and getting out in the mountains. Unfortunately, it has not been very conducive to writing trip reports and reading as many climbing blogs as possible. But, it is the adventure that matters, not live tweeting or instagraming your life right?

 

Anyways, my regular climbing/skiing partner Sam and I made plans to ski Cone Peak on Saturday. We planned to ski with another friend, Nilo, whom we hadn't skied with before. Cone peak is a mellow little mountain in the Tombstone Pass area off of OR-20. The plan was to check it out and see if we could take advantage of the storm cycle that had made its way through OR at the end of the week.

 

We took off from Corvallis at 0700, driving east on OR-20. About 10-15 miles from our destination we encountered a semi-truck that had gotten stuck in the middle of the road. A little Toyota Tacoma had driven up ahead of the semi and tried to pull it out using a tow-rope. It was silly to watch. Eventually we made it past the truck and ended up at the Tombstone Pass sno-park. One other vehicle was parked with some skiers gearing up. We stopped to chat with them and come to find out the group turned out to be some of our friends from Corvallis that had similar plans! We decided to team up and tackle Cone Peak.

 

The skin up was fairly mellow. There was 6-8 inches of new snow on top of a pretty solid snowpack. We were feeling pretty good once we got to the saddle just below the summit. The summit cone looked pretty thin and wind scoured so we decided to ski from the saddle down back towards the road. From there we could make a lap up to Iron Mountain, which looked to have some nice clearings to ski.

 

The ski down was fantastic, nice knee deep powder all the way down. We skinned up Iron Mountain, cliffed out, and skied another 1000' of pow back to the car.

 

A great day out with friends and great conditions! Be careful of some steeper wind loaded slopes.

 

 

Gear Notes:

Standard Avy stuff.

 

Approach Notes:

OR-20 to Tombstone Park. Make your way east along the road for about 300 meters and head north up the mountain.