Skiing May 22
Today Ben and I went up to the summit at Hatcher Pass. After our horrible experience a week ago we came prepared this time. Ben had snowshoes and I had my telemark skis. The snow had receded quite a bit since last week and we actually hiked for quite a while before we had to put on our snow gear. We got up to the pass and were rewarded with a great view.
 |
|
Looking through the pass at the Rae Wallace chutes
|
This is the perfect time of year to go up to the mountains, because they are virtually deserted. It's too late for most winter sports enthusiasts and too early for the summer recreationists. We were the only people in the pass. In fact, we were just about the only people who took the time to drive up there. Once we got to the pass we took a break for water and food. I had been considering skiing up the Hatch Peak ridge line and coming down the 35 degree slope down to the road, but the snow was bad, my abilities are still questionable on terrain that steep, and there was a recent slab avalanche on a similar exposure.
 |
|
The remains of a slab avalanche
|
So instead I opted to traverse onto the face from the elevation we were at. Ben took off his snowshoes and strapped them to his back so he could run down the exposed gravel on the road while I skiied. After traversing for a while I got out onto the face (top picture) and did something between a straightline and a traverse. Since I had to eventually get all the way across the face to get back to the car, turning straight down wasn't an option. I set a straightline on an angle down the slope, so I wasn't going straight down but I was losing elevation rapidly. The snow alternated between hard and soft, so I had to tuck my knees up to not fall. Unfortunately, one such sudden break between soft snow and hard snow was too rapid and I was going too fast. I got kind of thrown into the air and came down on my back and slid to a stop. From there I got up, made a few turns, and to my shock found myself looking out across a half mile flat snowfield. I didn't remember the snowfield being that far and Ben was booking it down the road. Luckily, since my heels were free I was able to ski across it. From there it was a nice gentle slope to the car, but as I got farther along the snow started getting sparser and sparser.
 |
|
The little dot in the middle is me coming down a hill
on one of the last remaining patches of snow. At this point I was almost
back down to the car.
|
When I got to the bottom of that snowfield I thought I was done skiing, but then I noticed if I went across about 30 feet of grass I could get to an extremely small strip of snow that appeared to lead all the way down to the road.
 |
|
The last strip of snow before the road.
|
I felt foolish skiing on a patch of snow that small, but it was much faster than walking. When I got to the bottom of that patch of snow, I took my skis off and went to hike about 100 meters to the road. But I had neglected one key detail. There was a ten foot wide rushing creek between me and the road. There was no way I could jump that with ski boots on. Ben had been at the car for quite some time now so he came down to see what the hang-up was. I tossed my skis and poles to him over the creek and contemplated jumping for quite a while, but eventually decided it was pointless. So I had to crawl back out of the gully the creek was in through some alder thickets, with ski boots on, and hike back up and around to the road. I was already completely exhausted from skiing up and down but I had no choice. I successfully hiked around to the road, crossed the creek on the bridge, and collapsed in the back of the van. All in all it was a successful day.
© 2004, Michael Logsdon