Bare/Lennox Traverse - March 13, 2004

Skiing off the summit of Lennox photo Ed Praitis
This traverse was conceived by Ed and I a couple of years ago, but the conditions window to make it happen seemed to be tough to open. Two years ago a scoping of the south end of the route gave us an idea of the snowpack that accumulates on the North Fork Snoqualmie road. Nearly 10 miles of road with deep snow on it remained.

Last year during the pitiful mid-season snowpack, we were able to drive to the trailhead and "ski" Bare Mountain (video here) - there was barely any snow on the mountain.

This year also has a pitiful low-elevation snowpack, so we figured the roads might be drivable pretty far, and yet there was still decent snowpack above 3000ft, so the skiing could be good. This requires a bit of "commitment to the conditions", because of the time-consuming car shuttles necessary for a traverse between I-90 and highway 2. Ed was wiped out from a rough week at work, and was ready to bag it, but I convinced him with an enthusiastic "let's go for it!".

Friday night was spent shuttling my truck to Money Creek Road, which was supposedly partially closed due to a washout. We started encountering snow at around 1300ft or so, much lower than I expected. Luckily it was plowed (by who?) all the way to the road closure (1600ft) where there was about 2 feet of snow. This didn't bode well for the North Fork road, which has about eight and a half miles of road above 1300ft on mostly north-facing slopes. However it is in the Cascade foothills, where the warmer temps keep the snow level much higher (or some kind of weather phenomenon does anyway). I called the ranger station, but they didn't have any idea of the road conditions, and asked me to report back if I went up there.

I spent Friday night at Ed's house, but our early Saturday morning start was lengthened when, at the edge of Ed's driveway, I realized that I had forgotten my ski boots at home. So we had to make a "little" detour to Seattle before heading back towards North Bend and up the North Fork road.

The snow was almost nowhere in sight, and we made it to the junction of Road 57 no problem, and made it up about 1 mile of that road where we abruptly hit two feet of snow (elevation 1800ft). We started skiing here on continuous snow (very convenient) from where we parked, reaching the Bare Mountain trailhead in about 2.5 miles (where we of course got our Alpine Lakes Wilderness permits).

So much red tape!

The trail began climbing out of the cool valley bottom, and this meant the snow disappeared. Grrr! So the skis went on and off for a while.

Crossing Bear Creek

Once we popped out into the "alpine" (low here, around 3000ft), the snow was continuous again. The tree skiing would be amazing here in powder (and a more normal snowpack)... might have to make a snowmobile trip in here some year.

Unusual-looking terrain in Bear Basin

We angled up on snow-covered slide alder slopes, nearing the headwall. Cliffs all around, but we hoped we could find a way up near the outlet of Bear Lakes. Bare rock slabs merged into steep dense little tree-farm areas with the beginnings of glide cracks, and we headed upwards towards those. This led to the most exciting skinning of the day for me, as I tried to stomp out "ski ledges" while traversing on what appeared to be a bunch of snow lying on a 45 degree rock slab above a little gully, which couldn't take too much stomping before it released.

Ed found a better way and soon we were skiing up gentler terrain towards Bear Lakes.

Bear Lakes. We came up from the valley off to the right.

We avoided the summit of Bare Mountain (been there, done that, and it doesn't help the traverse), and aimed for the col between Pt. 5449 and Pt. 5706. The topographic map showed it being easy to cross.

Above Bear Lakes, on the way to Pt. 5449.

The snow on this south-facing slope was corning to perfection, but we had no time to make laps on it. The excitement grew as I reach the ridge-top and peered over. Great view... but it looked like quite a drop over cornices on the other side. Could have been doable if there was nice deep powder on the north slope, but it was almost certainly ice. Looking towards Pt. 5449, it looked like that was the only easy was down, so I headed along the ridge. Soon Ed and the dogs joined me and we had a food break. We had this view:

Looking off towards the Middle and South forks and more well-known peaks.

The traverse from here looked straightforward, except what to do when we reached the west ridge of Lennox. Ed wanted to follow it in its entirety from the easy-to-access low point. But I thought it looked a little narrow and corniced, and suggested accessing it higher up, via some steeper slopes. We postponed the decision and focused on just getting over there instead.

Ed was the first to go, and the snow sure sounded icy! Zak stayed on the ridge top, and Maya made a few steps onto the face, but quickly returned to the ridge when she found it way icy! As Ed continued on the traverse, the dogs ran along the ridge, which only grew more corniced and difficult to escape as they ran towards Ed. They were making progress on the wrong axis, and there was no way there were getting down that way!

Ed begins the traverse towards Lennox Mountain. Maya (black dog) decides enough is enough! and heads backup. We are aiming for the black arrow on the left.

So I had to call them over, fighting against their "devotion to Master" - their dog brains too feeble to comprehend more than one thing at a time ("if you reach me, then you will be able to get to Ed")... finally they reached me, and I skied off the ridge, hoping they would follow. They did, with protest (Maya was whining lots due to the ice). Once we reached a flatter section, they took off with full speed towards Ed.

Further along the traverse.

The sidehilling was on icy runneled snow. Jarring, for sure.

Finally we arrived below Ed's col, and booted up a short steep section to the ridge. The ridge was fairly corniced, but the snow was firm and good walking, so we kept the skis in the pack to maximize maneuverability on the narrow ridge.

Hiking along the ridge, with Pt. 5706 behind.

The ridge was often very corniced on the right, and often cliffy on the left, so this restricted our route-finding. The dogs, unable to hoist themselves up by grabbing onto tree branches, had more difficulty. Zak turned one section by post-holing through the slush on the southeast side below the cornices.

Me doing a cruxy ridge maneuver (trees entangling skis).

At about 5300ft, the ridge flattened out, and from here it was easy to traverse onto the south-east facing slope of Lennox. This looked good, so we headed that way, aiming for a broader ridge going up to the summit from near Coney Lake.

Traversing along the southeast slope of Lennox.

Click here for part 2