SkiSickness

The relatively early opening of SR20 has yielded a surprisingly good late ski season this year.  The lower elevations generally suffer from below-avg snowpack; but the slightly above-mean precip totals for the Rainy Pass Snotel encouraged a look at Goode, which sports a lot of high N-facing relief to slake the ski-mountaineering thirst.  I was hopeful that NW-facing aspects would hold acceptable snow on a weekend fraught with warming concerns.  A view of Goode and Storm King as we crested the col SE of Black Peak:



And a picture of the upper half of the face, courtesy of John Scurlock. We skied the NW couloir, which drops down from the high (8700’) NW col immediately right of the summit block--maybe half of the business district is visible:



The NW col is a special place to collect your wits.  A tall drink of cool water, the line below sports quite steep skiing for 1500+’, then another ~4000’ to our bivy in the hole of Bridge Creek.  Recommended.  And, with this week’s low-ish snow levels, sometime soon you folks might like to have a look at this and/or the line (east face/gully) Sky and Ross established to the east of the summit, back in our previous “worst ski year” of 2005.

I was fortunate to recruit Eric Noll (hereafter, EZ-E) for this 3-day mission and adventure.  Together we made a lot of good decisions, and a couple minor bad ones, and had a blast in a spectacular setting.  We scored a supersweet bivy on an aberrant patch of dry ground next to a big tree right on the N Fork Bridge Creek.  As hinted above, we approached by passing Black Peak* and dropping down to Woody then Grizzly then finally Bridge creek.  A short portage of skis required at around 3400’.  We returned—and here EZ gets credit for a great idea—via Grizzly-->Falls Creek, Last Chance Pass, and Maple Creek-->Pass. 

This tour is an instant classic through inspiring terrain.

We enjoyed settled powder for the majority of the steep and sustained upper section, owing to its high, relatively sheltered, and NW aspect.  A thrilling ski!  The sun does get on the line in parts lower down, but there are a couple route options to mitigate exposure to sun effects.  And still lower we enjoyed hippie corn skiing.

EZ taking a route option lower down:



Here’s EZ following some encouraging powdery booting:



Last climbing shots.  Here’s an EZ pic of me working up steep snow near the col:



And EZ finishing.



A shot looking south through the col at Spider and others:


Time to ski.  The upper conditions were variably smooth and textured pow, with copious sluffing running far and fast—management required.  EZ sends some down from the top:



EZ apparently stoked for the lower turns to come:





Out of the business district, briefly weave through a couple avy paths (a big slab ripped out to immediately east of our line), then tons o’ corn.  Our line trends up and left from EZ (you can see the crown to the left of our route):



Memorable ski, topped with celebratory comestibles and combustibles--simple gentlemanly pleasures including good food, cigar and music by the creek, soaking in the day and the magnificence of peaks around us.  Adventure fix accomplished.

Skinning the scenic Falls Creek portion of our Monday return, we could look back at our line and other sources of inspiration:



Get it while (and if) it lasts!

More pics here.

Yeah buddy!


And WOW that was ten years ago. Tempus fugit.

Hey boo!

Not to quibble too much but your aspect looks to be dead north, or ever so slightly east of it.

You're a bad man, E-Money.

Looks a lot like the CJ.

I'd like to go skiing now.

Holy. That looks fun. The Scurlock picture is most excellent.

Yeah Sky you're right, it does face North, I just got done fixing that over on tay and come back here to see your correction. Of course, we mostly stuck with the NW (skier's right) aspect within the cooler... Thanks for being my fact-checking cuz.

{no good excuse, but one reason I messed that up is b/c this was the less-researched consolation prize; had other lines a little higher on the list going back there...}

As I said on tay, while the aspect is N, the name NW couloir seems appropriate enough to me.

It is to the NW of the summit...

Wow Awesome line guys!