Glacier Basin skiing - April 23, 2005
We biked into the old townsite in the dawn light, and stashed our bikes in the woods. It was warm.
After a mile of hiking, snow started to appear on the steep trail to the basin. It was a posthole wallow-fest, with holes and watery rock slabs underfoot. Finally the snow was continuous and we skied the remainder of the way into the flat basin.
Various options were discussed, but the one that looked good to Josh and I right now, was the couloir that led to East Wilmans Spire. Jason wanted to ski something on the other side of the valley, but it looked a little manky to get there. It was a longer and more exciting run maybe, but the East Wilmans Spire couloir is like "famous" or something.
We made our way up the broad talus slope in sloppy snow. Occasional wet sloughs came down the north face of Wilmans Peak, but there wasn't anything that threatened the couloir.
Soon we reached the "notch" at the base of the couloir. Time to boot up the rest of the couloir. We were post-holing knee-deep, but it went fairly quickly (especially if you weren't breaking trail!).
At the top, we encountered the really gusty winds that had been annoying us occasionally. Blah.
We headed up to the notch on the south side of the spire, though Jason wanted to climb the big headwall to our right, and maybe get to a summit (where maybe we could have entered the NW face?). The headwall looked a little steep for the sloppy conditions though.
Near the notch, Josh broke trail up a different (short) 55-60 degree headwall, swimming through the slop. Soon I followed (with my ski tips getting caught in the snow above me), and we were bunched up on the 45 degree slope above the headwall, thigh-deep in slop. Jason, for whatever reason, decided not to ski this, and instead jumped off and slid down to the flats, 50 feet below, on his ass.
We could have gone a little higher, but the snow was horribly deep and wet. Josh and I got our skis on and headed down to Jason. My one turn felt like it was mostly in the air.
We made turns down to the notch, and Jason tried to clamber around the cliffs on the right to get some good photos.
The turns in the couloir were really nice - sloppy but easy. The Hummels were going after it!
In fact the snow was good almost all the way down the 1750ft descent - just near the bottom it got really grabby and sent most of us on our asses a few times. Not so great when there are big rocks sticking out everywhere.
Now Jason wanted to head across the valley for an interesting line, but Josh wanted to nap, and I didn't think it was a great idea (the ski, not the nap) with the ever-softening snow. We ate lunch on a large rock for half an hour, watching occasional avalanches come off Monte Cristo Peak and Wilmans Peak.
Jason soon took off to climb his line, but Josh said he wouldn't get too far. I wasn't quite satisfied with the skiing yet today - the East Wilmans run was great fun, but a little short, and much easier than expected. So I felt like doing something else, but the snow was really just too sloppy for it.
Eventually, we left the rock, and met up with Jason who was coming down after having climbed a few hundred feet.
Crazy antics took us down the narrow hiking trail until the snow ran out. Josh and Jason skied past some terrified hikers climbing to the basin. When I passed by them, they asked if there were anymore skiers coming down. I said there were about 20 more, and they were much faster than the first two.
When Jason found his hiking shoes, which had been stashed on top of a rock, they were now floating upside down in a pool of water. He muttered some unpleasant words about the hikers.
Back in the townsite, it was a zoo, with boy scouts and tourist types wandering around everywhere.
A quick bike ride back to the car (with endless "did you find anything to ski?" questions, to which we tried to imagine clever answers), and we were back in town at around 4pm.