May 8 - 10, Hood River Mountain Biking

Hood River was the destination for the second week of May. Always a favorite for the variety of excellent trails and the great town. Tired of camping, and thinking it was a little cold, we rented a small house just blocks from downtown. We used the rationalization that we could save money by cooking at the house. Unfortunately, Hood River has a great selection of restaurants and we ended up eating out for all three nights. Brian's Pourhouse, for a burger and fish tacos, sweet, HorseFeathers for $1.00 appetizers, and finally 3 Rivers Grill. Actually didn't like the food at 3 Rivers Grill, but they have a great deck. We were able to eat outside all week, since the temps were near 80 degrees. The riding was perfect; day 1 - Whoopee trail, day 2 -Post Canyon, and day 3 -Hospital Hill with a descent on triple bypass.

Francine in the trees on Whoopdee trail

Mt. Adams in the distance

Triple Bypass was good and narrow

May 5-6, Mt. Baker - Coleman/Deming - Close?

It is springtime in the Northwest, and for backcountry skiers, that means it is time to start skiing the volcanos. Knowing that Paradise would be a zoo on opening day, and wanting to minimize drive time, we decide on Mt. Baker via the Coleman and Deming glacier route. Unfortunately due to high winds and bad visibility, we called it a day at 9,100 feet. 1,600 feet shy of the summit. We still got some good turns in, and I even got a good sunburn.

Frank and Greg traverse to base camp at 7,100 feet.

Greg roped up for glacier travel on day 2.
Making a retreat in the clouds

Better visibilty and good turns from base camp down to 3,500 feet

Greg's excellent trip report:
http://www.randosaigai.com/colemandeming050507.html

April 11-16, Sea Otter Classic

Thanks to our friends, Matt and Heidi, we were able to attend the Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, Ca.. Matt does all the marketing for Topeak bicycle products and needed someone to help staff his booth. The Sea Otter is a road and mountain bike festival that typically marks the start of bicycling season.

Francine and Heidi setting up the booth

Singletrack and sheep

Kevin in the hills

Francine in the trees

A stop in Santa Cruz after the festival

April 10, Kendall Peaks

I got off work this morning and checked in with Francine. She said Greg had called last night. I decided to call Greg and see if he wanted to go ski. He was a little groggy, but quickly made up his mind to go. We had heard there was a little new snow, so we were envisioning dust over crust. We were very wrong! The snow was 6-8 inches deep. Nice to get a powder day this late in spring. Today we skied. Tomorrow, we fly to Monterey to work the Topeak booth at the Sea Otter Classic.

Greg makes good turns off Kendall Ridge

Does this look like spring skiing?

April 4, Vantage - Rock climbing

Frenchman Coulee, Vantage Wa.

April 3, Snoqualmie Mountain - E. Slopes

Great weather brought out the crew for an assault on the East slopes of Mt. Snoqualmie. Here Greg and Frank look up at the East summit of Snoqualmie Mt. We all had plans for the evening, so decided to ski down from a knob on the ridge versus the summit. The new snow of the past couple days made for excellent skinning and skiing.



Greg rips it up

Checking out the slide action on the slope we skied.

Special appearance by Scott O. doing the telemark turn.

Greg skis down the gut

March 29, Roslyn Singletrack

Finishing out the multisport week with a little mountain biking in the hills above Roslyn, Wa.

March 28, Red Mountain

Greg skins right to the top

First turn off the summit

Red Mountain is the perfect pyramid that is highly visible from the top of Alpental. It is usually a real workout to make it up it's steep slopes. I have passed it by for easier tours up towards the East peak of Snoqualmie, but I needed to tick it off my list for the season. Luckily Greg Louie had recovered from his broken fibula and was ready to go, along with my trusty partner Frank. As we toured up the lower slopes we were concerned about the stability of the snowpack, but as we toured higher the slopes firmed up, and we were actually able to easily skin right to the summit. Much better than past years where we have resorted to boot packing through mush or

barely being able to gain purchase on icy slopes.

March 27, Peshastin Pinnacles

Originally I was only going to post my backcountry ski adventures on the website, but that would make it pretty boring throughout the summer, and I would be missing some great photos of my summer adventures. Last Sunday while it was raining at Snoq. Pass I drove down to Ellensburg and went Mt. Biking in the hills above town. The scenery was great and I didn't bring the camera. So from now on, I will try to bring the camera more, and post more off-snow activities.

Today we drove an hour and half to Peshastin Pinnacles to get some Eastern Washington sunshine and climb a little rock.

Frank works the crack

Kevin hanging out

Alpental Randonnee Race

This race was the same day that I left for the Snow Peak Shelter. I had to work the day before and did not think I could get to the race in time, nor did I feel like a real pain fest. Anyhow, my #1 ski partner Frank Neuman wanted to test his mettle and entered the recreational class. He sent me these pictures of the race that he stole from Initial Photography. Looks like a pretty cool race.

I think Frank made this spiffy map of the course

A le mans start.

Course went straight up under both the chairs, with a boot section up the fan and this ladder section through the cliffs above Rollen.

March 19, Snow Peak Shelter - Almost

This picture on a tree was as close as we got to seeing the shelter.

Well, the idea started off good. Unfortunately the idea was better than reality. The idea was for 4 or 5 people to skin 3 hours into Snow Peak shelter at Sherman Pass in the Kettle Crest Range. Well as the date approached it looked like only Francine and I were willing to brave the forecast of rain and warm temperatures at Sherman Pass. We decided to cut the hut time back to two nights and spent the first night in Republic. We lied to the innkeeper at The Prospector Inn and told him we had a AAA card. We saved a whopping 2.75 for a room rate of 52.25. That's pretty cheap for a clean room. Upon asking for dining advice, we found out we could eat at Madonna's or the Sportman bar and grill. Good thing smoking is banned in taverns, or I don't think I would have convinced Francine to eat in a tavern. Little did we know this was probably the highlight of the trip. The burgers were excellent and they even had Mac-N-Jacks on tap. Better yet, the lively crowd of about 18 locals started buying rounds for the whole bar. After one free round, we had to decline the second round, since that would exceed our two beer limit.


Well, we got up Monday morning, drove to Sherman Pass and hefted our heavy packs and headed towards the shelter.


Upon starting up we noticed that the snow had not frozen up the night before, and was very unconsolidated. Also, there was not much snow on the ground. If the pass had been any lower then 5,575', I don't think we would have had any snow. We came to a Y in the trail and could go either way to go around Sherman Peak. Unfortunately we went the wrong way and ended up on a Southerly exposure where we were sinking through the snow. We decided to turn around and go the other way around Sherman Peak. This probably wasted an hour and then when we did get around the peak we discovered the snowpack had melted out to the point where we would have to climb around bushes and over rocks. We decided after 3 hours of skinning to turn around and head home.
Oh well, sounded like a good trip. The free beers were good.


First turn around, notice Francine's left pole has sunk all the way into the snowpack.



Final turnaround. Time to head home

March 15, Chair Peak Circumnavigation

With 3 inches of new snow over the rain crust from earlier in the week, Thursday looked like the day to tour. I got a leisurely start, meeting Frank at Alpental, at 10:30. We rode the chairlifts to get a mechanical lift to start our tour. Frank had not done the circumnavigation of Chair Peak and was looking forward to seeing how the route looked in the winter. He had previously hiked the route in summer. We traversed out from Alpental to Piss Pass and then down into the Great Scott bowl area. We then put on our skins and headed up to the pass between Bryant and Chair Peak. We were able to skin most of the way, except for a short section we decided to boot pack up. From Bryant Pass down to Melakwa Lake was buttery smooth with lots of good turns. The skins came back out for the climb to Melakawa Pass, a huge talas field in the summer time. Then it was a short descent to Chair lake, and several good turns down to Snow Lake. Probably the best section was skiing from Chair lake down to Snow Lake. In the summer it is a nice waterfall. Today it was an excellent ski pitch. The waterfall was just starting to reappear from it's winter hibernation. Frank got a good line down the gully, and I stayed a little higher and got a nice steep line. It was a good skin to get to the far end of Snow Lake then we had one final climb up to Snow Lake divide to finish our tour. Our legs were tired, but it had been an excellent day of skiing with good snow on all aspects. Even our final ski down to source lake and back to Alpental was excellent. Tour time 4 hours.

March 10, Hyak Skin and Ski race

Image taken by Greg before he decided to catch up.

The Snoq. Summit nordic center decided to do a low key Tele/AT/whatever festival which included a race. I showed up about 10:30 and the race had a whopping 4 people signed up. I signed my name on the clipboard and was ready to go. I chatted with Joe from Outdoor Research, who had been talked into putting the race together. There was a little concern that John, the nordic manager, thought we could just race up to the bottom of chair 2 and back. Luckily with a little persuasion, Joe convinced him to let the race go to the top of creek run and down serpentine. It probably helped that Rick, the Trab rep, was standing next to Joe in full randonee race glory, tight racer tights with euro bright orange coloring and big TRAB logos. As we got closer to the 11 o'clock start time, people started appearing out of the woodwork. We ended up with almost 30 racers. The race would be one or two laps, depending on your preference. Turned out to be an excellent race. Thanks to Joe, OR, and all the Hyak vollies for putting on the race. Scott Coldiron came from Spokane to show us what a real racer looks like and took first place and a sweet OR coat. Yours truly picked up second, with a telemarker on skinny skis in hot pursuit. Greg Louie showed up 5 minutes after the race started and decided to join in. He ended up only about ten minutes behind me!

March 8, Kendall Peak area

Plan was to circumnavigate Chair Peak with a lift assist from Alpental. Unfortunately the 6 inches of new muck slowed down the opening of the BC gates. Took a couple lift runs with Frank then we drove down to Sahalie and skinned up to the Kendall Peak area. Snow was a little thick, but the scenery was great and the snow was smooth.

February 25, Cold Smoke Festival, Whitewater

Trash Chutes

Day 3 of the Festival. Steep ski clinic with Andrew McLean. Unfortunately Frank, during his warm-up run on the groomer, collides with one of our roommates and destroys his brand new skis. He ended up taking it easy and checking out the demo skis. The clinic started the morning skiing Trash Chutes - a quick 15 min skin from the main lift. Short but sweet, we made two laps and then it was lunch time.
After lunch, I hurried out to meet the group for the afternoon session. Some how it turned out that our entire group, except for me, didn't come back for the afternoon session. Looks like just Andrew McLean and I for the afternoon. Andrew had spotted a nice couloir on Ymir peak that he thought would be fun. We took the main chair up, then put our skins on and started up the ridgeline towards "first choice couloir". We reset our watches to see how quickly we could make it to the couloir. Took about 54 minutes to skin from the top of the chairlift. That was going at Andrew's all day pace. I don't know if I could go all day at that pace, but it was fine for an hour. At the top, Andrew got out his rope and tied himself to a tree, then proceeded to knock off a good chunk of the cornice protecting our couloir. The entrance was fairly steep, and we could have probably dropped in, but Andrew being somewhat safe, belayed me down the first 30 feet with his rope, giving me a chance to assess the snowpack. Snowpack was solid and we had a great ski down the couloir and back to the ski area lodge, where we could look back and point out our line. First tracks of the weekend on the "first choice couloir". A nice way to finish a great weekend.

Andrew McLean kicking the cornice off the top of the couloir.

February 24, Cold Smoke Festival, Whitewater

Second day of the festival. more new snow. Frank, Francine and I were signed up for Ski Touring Made Easy with Brian Gould and Greg Hill ( famous for skinning 10,000 feet a day for 100 days. That's a lot of climbing.) Greg's tip to make it easy was to think positive! Today we took the short chair up and then skinned about 10 minutes to access the drainage to 5 mile creek. Had probably the best powder run of the week, down into the drainage. Then, we spent the next 3-4 hours climbing up to the top of the valley. From the top of the valley we were able to drop back in on the ski area drainage in front of Ymir Peak.