Shuksan from the ski area. The White Salmon is on the right flank.
April 10-11, 2004
Paul Belitz, Dave Coleman
Dave and I wanted to find some corn in all this hot weather. For some reason we thought that the north facing slopes on Shuksan would deliver. We were wrong. Very, very wrong.
Leaving Seattle at 10am Saturday got us walking from the resort at 2. We skinned past the lift skiers, soon breaking away from the ropes and headed down through the woods. After getting cliffed out bushwhacking between two creeks, I hiked back up, and found the snowbridge that Dave had found half an hour ago. Several more interesting creek crossings later we hit the open avalanche paths below Shuksan Arm. We skinned up to 5200 feet or so, where we dug out a nice bivy spot and admired the chairlifts. I mean, scenery.
We got up the next morning just after sunrise, and were skinning up the crust over glop by 7. Skins didn't work very well, so we soon switched to boots. Postholing up the glacier wasn't too bad, and after a few hours we hit the Upper Curtis. There we found a bibler 'goretex coffin'. I deduced that this tent must belong to Steve and Elain Ramsey, whom I had met on the Tooth a few months before. Dave and I decided to chill next to the tent and wait for the snow to soften, since we weren't very interested in the summit pyramid. Ten minutes later, Steve and Elain showed up (hah! I was right!), and we chatted while they packed up and headed down.
My itch to move was getting very strong after a few minutes, and I convinced Dave to ski. The snow was hard, so we took another break above the White Salmon proper. When we did ski, we found a wonderful breakable crust over the glacier. It was treacherous enough that it psyched me out completely, reducing me to kick turns and traverses. Dave was rippin' it up with his patented pedal-hops, but I decided that this was a poor place to learn a new turn, so I just sideslipped and traversed as quickly as possible. It sucked.
After a while, we hit the slush below the avy debris, and we traversed over to our bivy. We packed up and headed out. Rather than follow our approach, we decided to ski down the valley, then follow a large open swath in the forest back to the ski area. This would have worked well if the snow had been hard. Or continuous. Or moatless. As it was, though, it took us an hour of wallowing and bushwhacking and swearing to get back to the grooms. As a final little fuck-you my quad cramped on literally the last step to the ski area rope. From there it was a quick glide with a bit of skating to get back to the car.
The gate was being closed as we walked by (we parked outside of the gate just for this reason), and right as the attendant was about to lock everything up, a white Jeep streaked by, and the Ramseys narrowly avoided a forced parking lot bivy. We were back in Seattle several hours later, and now I've got a strong urge to go back and ski that glacier in better style. Getting your ass kicked can be motivating.