Becky + Pete

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Cascadian couloir, Mt. Stuart

link to photo album

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Spearhead Traverse... going for a little walk at Whistler

link to photo album

Becky and I have had the Spearhead Traverse on our to-do list for years. The Spearhead is a high alpine traverse that connects Whistler and Blackcomb mountains by travelling around the head of the U-shaped valley that divides the ski resort. Its a ridiculously scenic trip that provides a pretty mellow ski route across more than a dozen glaciers and high passes.

I skied it back in 2007 without her, and she's been wanting to ski it ever since. Since our schedules rarely seem to mesh with catching a good snow and weather window, we couldn't quite believe our plans to take Friday off where actually coinciding with some nice weather and fairly safe avy conditions.

We gave it the ol' college try to find some partners to join us, but no one was available to play. Given that we'd be skiing it just as a team of two and spending a lot of time on glaciated terrain, we were hesitant to go...waffling and trying to come up with other plans until about 9pm Thursday night. Finally we decided this really wasn't any different than any number of trips we've done just the two of us, and given the forecast, there was no way we'd be alone up there. We scrambled to finish packing, load up the car, and catch a reasonable amount of sleep before our alarm would go off at 3am.

Friday morning quickly arrived, and we grabbed the multiple thermoses of coffee and barreled out of Seattle at 3:30am heading for Whistler. Fortunately not too many folks are out and about that time of day and by 8am we were in the parking garage in Whistler village throwing on the ski clothes and walking to the lifts.

One of the best things about the Spearhead Traverse is that no time is wasted on the approach...by taking the chairlifts at Blackcomb, you can knock off a vertical mile of elevation without breaking a sweat. We saw more than a few folks with big packs on the ride up, so we figured we weren't going to be alone, and riding up the gondola we chatted with a local whose buddies were skiing the traverse in a day, so we knew we'd have a highway to follow the whole way.

The rest of the day was just one scenic vista after the next, expansive glaciers, neat little passes, a few short pitches of nice north facing powder. By mid-afternoon our sleep-deprived brains were starting to be ready for a nap, but we shuffled on for a little longer, taking advantage of the weaker than expected sun which kept some of the south facing terrain from become a sloppy avy-prone mess. By 4pm we'd topped out above the Diavolo glacier, we had another short south facing pitch below us and we knew it would be a rutted, icy mess in the morning, but a great little windlip next to some rocks and a wonderful view lured us into camping for the night. We'd been carrying crampons and axes (we appeared to be the only skiers carrying this extra baggage) so we figured we could always just boot down the slope in the morning. We dug in, set up the tent, re-hydrated and ate dinner, and were sacked our before sunset.

Twelve hours later we emerged from our cocoon very well rested and ready to keep on shuffling. As we expected the slope down to the Diavolo was a frozen mess, so we tossed the crampons on and made quick work of descending the slope. We saw and heard some other skiers made a chattery descent shortly thereafter which they referred to as 'bone-jarring'. Once out on the sunny flats of the Diavolo, we hopped into the skin track and headed for the next col. Topping out between Fitzsimmons and Benvolio we were now looking at the long straight shot out towards Whistler.
A quick descending traverse across the Overlord glacier and a short climb to Whirwind Fissile col and then a long ski down off the glaciated terrain. I had hoped the snow would be good for the ski down from the col, but the strong spring sun did its work on the west facing slope and provided us with a long pitch of breakable crust. It was hard to complain though given that the weather and views were so nice...so what if we had some bad snow.

Once past Fissile Peak we stopped in the sun, ate some lunch, and lounged about for a good long while. A few more short climbs and more breakable crust finally brought us to the Whistler resort boundary by early afternoon and then we joined the masses of resort skiers for a ski down in the village.
After walking through the village on a very sleepy Friday morning and two days of blissful mountain travel, skiing into the sea of humanity at Whistler village, during the Telus festival, was a bit shocking. We still managed to stake out a table at Zog's and get a big bowl of poutine before we tossed the gear into the car and headed for Seattle.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

deep and fluffy in the Crystal backcountry

Face shot deep snow in mid-March....not bad.

Monday, February 21, 2011

A couple days in the sun

link to photo album

Finally some good backcountry conditions in the Cascades...cold, clear weather and some leftover powder from the midweek storms. Saturday we headed up to Snoqualmie Pass and skied the north slope of Chair Peak, then toured over to Mt.Roosevelt and skied a hidden line off the west side of the mountain.

Sunday we headed up to Stevens Pass and skied Lichtenburg Mtn…still plenty of good snow out there. Maybe there are a couple more months of winter left afterall.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Happy New Yurt

link to photo album

Spent the long New Years weekend touring out of the Cascade Powder Cats yurt near Stevens Pass. The company has just this season opened up use of their yurt for non-guided parties and we were their first. Getting a ride in their snowcat up to the hut saved us eight miles of skinning uphill and let us bring along a few extras, like umpteen pounds of bbq pork and sausages for our dinners.

The weather was really cold, but clear, and the last storm had dumped a couple feet of powder for us to track up. Over the three days the wind took its toll on the upper slopes and windslabs messed up some of the most interesting terrain, but we farmed the wind sheltered slopes below the yurt and got in some nice touring.

Ryan runs a really nice operation at Cascade Powder Cats and its great that the Cascades have another hut to tour out of.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

JMT Day 15 / September 14, 2010 - Mt.Whitney and cheeseburgers

stats: 14 miles, 3000' gain, 6200' loss

We were so grateful that the nighttime low temps didn’t get anywhere close to what we’d seen the night before….we both slept warm and soundly and were well rested when the alarm went off.

As this was our last night in the tent, we no longer had to worry about our tent or clothes smelling like food and attracting bears, so we fired up the stove right next to our tent and finally got to have breakfast and coffee in our sleeping bags instead of out in the cold. We broke camp and joined the string of headlamps working up the switchbacks about an hour before dawn.

After spending two weeks almost entirely above 10,000ft we were incredibly well acclimated for Whitney and climbing the 14,497ft peak felt more like a casual stroll at Snoqualmie Pass (3000 ft), especially now that our food bins were down to just a couple pounds of food. We hit Trail Crest about an hour after sunrise..this is the spot where the west side trail we’d been on joins up with the Whitney Portal trail that everyone else is on for climbing Whitney as just a weekend outing…from there we had two miles and a thousand feet of gain to reach Whitney’s summit.

If we’d been in the sun, we’d have been plenty warm, but the two mile traverse runs along the west side, and our hands were freezing. We’d brought thin fleece gloves which were perfect for everything up until now…fortunately a spare pair of wool socks works as a fine pair of mittens in a pinch, so we continued on to the summit happily wearing socks on our hands.

As we neared the summit, I looked back and saw a familiar figure, and I said to Becky ‘hey, is that Larry?’ …I don’t think Becky said anything, but man oh man did her pace speed up…I think she was determined to hit the top before the speed-demon Larry got there.

The summit cabin came into view and before we knew it we joined Beverly and a young man who was Larry’s son on the summit…Larry strolled up a few minutes later and we all basked in the sunshine of Whitney’s summit celebrating our various journeys to get there. Larry’s son had come up the more challenging mountaineers route that morning and brought along soda, beer, chips, and chocolate…we were happy to help them lighten their pack and ate far too many Pringles.

After spending close to an hour on the summit, Becky and I grabbed our packs and started down…the expected crowds coming from Whitney Portal were beginning to show up. The vast majority of the hikers looked like hell, going so slow and pressure breathing as we chatted and hopped over boulders…not everyone gets as much time as we had had to be acclimated.

We descended the hundred or so switchbacks blasted and carved into Whitney’s east slope and after a short lunch break we met up with Beverly again who we stuck with for the rest of the hike out. I think Becky was happy to have someone new to chat with and I was happy that she was apparently unaware of the wonderfully rapid pace that Beverly was setting. We pounded down the 6300ft to the trailhead by mid-afternoon and before even going to the car for a clean change of clothes we were at the Whitney Portal Store ordering cheeseburgers, fries, and cokes. Despite the pile of food being massive, it was devoured in an instant. We said goodbye to Beverly and headed for the car, which fortunately the bears had taken no interest in over the past two weeks.

A quick drive north on highway 395 brought us to Bishop where we found a motel and hit the pharmacy for all the toiletries we couldn’t leave in our car due to bears ripping into cars for anything that had a nice smell at the trailhead. I finally got to shave off my sad little beard and Becky spent a good half-hour scrubbing the dirt off her feet. By 8:00 we were starving again, so we headed to a nearby taqueria where we ate approximately ten pounds of tacos and tortas.

The next day we hit the Schatt's Bakery where we tried to curb our insatiable appetite and only eat a couple pastries each, then it was off to the coast….we reached the Redwoods by nightfall, camped, then drove home via the northern CA and OR coast the next day. After two weeks of sunny, mostly hot weather, driving along the gray, drizzly coast was quite the change and definitely signaled that we’d squeezed the last of summer out of this vacation and it was time for fall to begin.

After we got back, we read that Cliff Mass, local Seattle weather guru, had officially declared this the worst summer in Seattle since 1980. Upon hearing that declaration we were extra happy to have had the opportunity to spend two weeks basking in the (mostly) warm California sunshine.