Powder Cache

The snow had been slowly piling up in the North Cascades, and I decided to head back to the powder cache with Tim to hopefully get some good powder turns. Tim drove up the night before in his camper and took his dogs out for a quick tour before I got there. He said there was a decent amount of snow on the first 500 feet, so hopes were high that the skiing would be good farther up.

There were four other cars at the pull-off and a group of two started heading up as we were getting ready. We followed suit 10 minutes later and started skinning up the well worn track. There indeed did seem to be a decent amount of additional snow since I had been here on Tuesday.

Start of the tour

Tim coming up the skin track

It started to lightly snow on us part of the way up, and the snow continued for the rest of the tour. Once on the ridge we stopped again for more food and hydration and agreed to continue up to the top. There was a good amount of new snow on top of the crust, but fortunately no sign of any wind effect and after doing some quick hand pits on the way up, I was feeling good about the conditions.

We arrived at the top, and unlike my outing before, we could actually see a little down into Varden Creek and the lower aspects of Silver Star Mountain. We did a relatively quick transition and decided to ski directly down on the ridge.

Views from the top

Unlike last time, where I quickly got off the ridge, Tim and I followed it down for a ways. The skiing was pretty good, but I found the light to be pretty flat and had a hard time seeing the changes in the terrain. While the powder didn't have any wind effect, there seemed to be undulations in the lower layers of snow below the crust, and the drops and rises threw me off a bit. There were also a couple of existing tracks on the ridge, and when crossing them I was occasionally hitting the crust.

Tim coming down the top

We decided to drop off the ridge to the skier's right, and found a place where there were no cornices to drop in. There were no other tracks in sight and we enjoyed some great powder through the trees.

Tim skiing off the ridge

We found some nice alleys through the trees and continued skiing down, favoring skier's left when in doubt.

Nice pow

Eventually we spotted the open bowl to our left and made a short traverse over to get into it. There was still a lot of avalanche debris in the bowl, and not enough new snow to cover it, so we stuck to skier's right and found some untouched snow amongst the ski tracks.

Tim enjoying the snow

We continued skiing down, stopping only to take some photos and videos. Towards the bottom we stayed skier's left and found some well spaced trees with enough new snow over the crust to make the skiing enjoyable.

Tim near the bottom

We skied to the bottom, found the skin track and then popped out of the forest at the pull-off. A couple of cars had left and one or two new ones had arrived while we were on our tour, but hadn't run into anyone on the tour. Not a bad powder Sunday in an otherwise terrible winter...