After at least a week of sunny warmer weather, five of us got together to head from Snoqualmie pass out towards Snow Lake and beyond. It was a nice day with overcast weather and just a bit below freezing when we set out from Alpintal on an initially groomed trail. The trail dead-ended at a stream, and we followed ski tracks along the bank before our fist ascent.
We turned uphill and immediately came to our first steep icy slope. Dewitt put on his ski crampons and I was jealous. We made it up the first pitch with quite a few switchbacks, and I wondered how bad the eventual descent would be on the sheet ice. Didn’t worry about that too much for now and continued forward through some rolling forest.
We had a steep icy climb up to the pass above Snow Lake. We started skinning up, but I shortly took off my skis and booting up was much easier even though I had to carry my skis. Dewitt unfortunately lost his helmet and it rolled a long way down the mountain. He decided to wait until the return trip to grab it. My beard started icing up on the climb because I was breathing hard.
We had a break at the top before we skied down to Snow Lake. The route we took down was very steep and I sideslipped it for half the way. There were also some icy cliffs to avoid which were harder to see from above. However, we all made it safely down.
We headed across Snow Lake towards Avalanche Mountain where we could see an open snowfield on the side of the mountain which looked promising. We blazed a trail through the woods on some uncomfortably steep gully side before we came to the top of a rise we could more easily follow. We could see ski tracks on the other side of the stream, but we had no way to cross over.
After passing over another frozen lake, we ascended the steep snowfield we had seen on Avalanche Mountain. I got about half way up with my skins before I took off my skis and booted up the rest of the way. We had a good break up top, with great views of the surrounding mountains.
Then it was finally time for the fun part! We had some great turns going down the snow field in soft corn snow, then more gradual downhill through the woods with a couple flatter spots by lakes.
Back at Snow Lake, we skinned back up to the pass with some slipping on the icy slopes and then were able to take off our skins for the rest of the day.
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