Mountain Squirrel » Snow

Snoqualmie Mountain, January 24

Laurel — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:05:38 +0000

When snow and weather conditions are good and there’s a boot track to follow, Snoqualmie Mountain is hardly even a scramble, just a long hike. However, Denny, Megan, and I must have subconsciously wanted something more challenging. We got on a boot track leading towards Guye and ended up a thousand feet above the usual route in the bottom of Commonwealth Basin. Not wanting to lose the elevation we gained, we stayed high on Guye’s shoulder and traversed to meet the trail to Cave Ridge. It was more interesting than the usual route – steep and awkward at times but not difficult because of the good snow conditions. Better views too. Of course, the price of that is that it takes twice as long.

Guye Shoulder

When we were almost at the Guye/Cave Ridge saddle we met a descending group. “Great weather,” we said sincerely. “Great weather,” they said ironically, and described 50 mph gusts. After getting on the other side of the saddle and getting a hazy view of Snoqualmie Mountain itself, we experienced this firsthand.

Our Objective

The wind wasn’t really dangerous — I only got knocked over once, and anyway it was blowing towards the gentle slope side of the ridge and away from the cliff side. It was certainly annoying, with the flapping my hood off, icing up my glasses (as if it wasn’t hard enough to see through the horizontal snow), and blowing my ice axe at my shin. I’ve been in higher wind before but the amount of snow carried made it seem worse.

Denny wisely decided to stop at a tree and dig a hole to hide from the wind while Megan and I went towards the summit. Eventually Megan, who was a few yards ahead, reached some sort of local maxima and stopped, so we turned around. Usually when I’m outside I’m a little disappointed to be going back, but this time I was looking forward to getting out of the wind (and hoping that facing the other way would help the glasses situation).

Summit

As we headed back to the shelter of the big trees, the wind calmed down, and the snow really started settling. The track that we followed and pounded in was starting to fill in, and by the time we got on the snowshoe highway in Commonwealth Basin there was almost a foot of new snow on the ground.

Chair Peak, December 13

Laurel — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:56:39 +0000

I stare at the perfect six sided snowflake, a white asterisk against the black fabric on my left glove. It’s kind of surprising when real life actually resembles the cartoon representation.

The rope is moving slowly but steadily. My partner, Sketchy, hasn’t placed a single piece of gear yet, and I’ve just fed the middle marks on our 60 meter through my belay device. The Northeast buttress of Chair Peak doesn’t match the gear-catalog representation of ice climbing: no sun glittering on thick, glassy ice, no plunging frozen waterfalls, no place to put ice screws. So far it’s been one mixed pitch of ice-cemented rocks, two of steep snow with occasional rocks and bushes. One of the steep snow pitches happened to have about 15 feet of ice that could be recognized as a frozen waterfall. We’re now on another snow pitch, which should be the last (supposedly, not that we’ve got a route description with is).

The climbing has felt easy to me, but I haven’t been leading. The protection is what’s sparse, and Sketchy’s a little stressed out, judging by the grumbling and ranting coming from above.

The snow is dust over a styrofoam-like crust over sugar. The crust holds together adequately, but occasionally a large chunk breaks off and dissolves into a bucket load of sugar while it slides down the slope. A chunk comes down following the rope line and I duck left behind the medium sized rock that’s both anchor and shelter. The leader of a party of 3 behind us has climbed past me and is now enthusiastically cursing and digging around in the snow for his own anchor. I hear another large chunk of styrofoam snow sliding down the slope from his position and duck to the right around the rock.

Feed rope out. Duck behind rock. Knock snow off my boots. Repeat.

The rope stops, with just a few feet left. My turn to follow. The biggest challenge has been trying to reach the gear loops on my harness around my puffy down jacket and the waistbelt of my pack. On this pitch I don’t have to worry about that. The single piece of protection is a girth hitched sling that I don’t even have to loosen to pull over its rock, so it doesn’t take long to reach the belay. Actually, I reach Sketchy sitting down in the snow, running the rope around a ridge as the belay.

We’re done with the technical climbing, and the summit is just a scramble away (supposedly, not that we can see it). The last time I climbed Chair it was early summer, and we sunbathed on the summit block while admiring the view. Today, no sun, no views, and, so close to solstice, no daylight, so no summit.

The first rap station is barely visible below, a rainbow of frozen webbing around a very gnarled small tree. Not the best anchor ever, but it’s good enough to be our ticket down the gully-slash-wind-tunnel to a hopefully uneventful walk out in the dark.

Descending

Chair Peak, Northeast Buttress

Commonwealth Basin, November 22

Laurel — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:09:06 +0000

In the Pacific NW, winter isn’t a season, it’s an elevation, so this is not the first time this year that we’ve been snowed on, but it is the first time we’ve gone specifically to wallow in it.

Snow!!!

Commonwealth Basin is a good spot for early season snowshoeing. No permit is required for parking (if you park in the first ski area parking lot off of exit 52), avalanche danger is minimal if you stay off the peaks, and you can kind of randomly wander around without worrying too much about getting lost.

more pictures by Denny