Mount Hardy, southwest slope - April 17, 2004

The weather didn't sound too good, but Vincent and I went to find some slopes off the recently opened highway 20. Vince stopped for coffee at Clark's Eatery in Marblemount, and I played with my newfound friend while we waited.

The Marblemount "wildlife" is getting too commercialized.

At the Swamp Creek parking area, Bill and Stephanie suprised us by pulling up. After some discussion, we all got back in the cars to drive around a bit looking for something more enticing than Mount Hardy, which looked like it had a lot of bare ground leading up to the snow. We made it to Bridge Creek, then ended up back at Mount Hardy. Nothing changed except that it was now 20 minutes later and 3 degrees warmer.

Hiking up

I seemed to be in "Utah shape", because I motored up ahead of everyone. Or maybe it was the Cadbury eggs I ate. Vincent will tell you it was my too light skis.

What the hell kind of expression is that? He's French guy, he must be complaining about something. It's too sunny, or the snow is too perfect or something.

Upon reaching a bench, the snow became continous, and we ascended through a beautiful burn. The snow was seeming pretty fantastic.

I arrived at the summit about a half hour before the others, and dropped my pack and scrambled up the rocks to the top. You could ski from almost the tip top, but it looked like "for the sake of it" rather than good skiing, and this was my first time on skis in a month or so, so I decided against it.

Very tempting to trundle, but I went to check it out - it would have required some work, unless someone would have decided to trade their life for a good trundle.

Soon the others arrived, and by this time I had come down, and went over to investigate a cornice and a gully near the summit.

Headwaters of the Methow River

There were ski tracks and boot prints from last week - it looked like they were up here in pretty slushy conditions - probably last weekend's heat wave. Their boot pack up to the summit block was almost waist deep, while I was only making relatively small indentations. Looks like they skied slop, while we had smooth ripe corn on a bombproof snowpack. Life is rough....

Bill approaches the summit area.

Rain clouds hung over the peaks off in the distance on all sides of us, but the general area over us remained sunny.

Answers lead to more questions...

We posed for the requisite sponsor shots, then began our descent.

Steph eating a summit snack while Bill looks on.

Mmm....

Thus began the 3000ft descent in beautiful corn.

Time to go down. There are the cars on the lower left, 4000ft below.

It was good.

Vincent in the big bowl.

Fantastic actually. Being somewhat of a powder snob, I forgot how much fun corn can be. Wow! Yummy! The silos were busting at the seams!

Bill and Steph pondering - hmm, should I ski the perfect corn on this side, or the perfect corn on that side?

Still really good. Taking lots of "ski the ridge with a nice backdrop" photos.

Bill

I ran out of space on the card in my digicam. It's tough cycling through 100 pictures to find the crappy ones to delete when you can't see anything on the LCD because of the bright sun, and the bright perfect snow.

I felt like taking the next week off, hanging out here and ski forever.

Bill in the Burn.

We hiked at least 1800ft of snowless terrain on the 4000ft ascent, and we were determined to ski down lower than that. What looked like a burned out area with dense trees turned out to be a burned out area with perfectly spaced trees and damn - the snow was still fantastic, not slushy! We made it down to around 4900ft before the snow "ran out"... we were still able to connect bits, but now it really was slushy, with pokey things sticking out and air pockets next to buried logs.

We hugged the terrain above the cliffs next to the stream gully, which was still snow-filled. Should we find a way in to get more turns? It looked cliffy to get in. On the rim there was still continuous snow, so I just kept traversing down. I walked for a bit when I became involved in an incident with a large log (which I slid off) and a small tree (in front of the log, which prevented me from sliding completely off the log by grabbing my right leg and placing itself in my crotch). Bill and Steph caught up to me, but where was Vincent?

Just a little bony for April.

We noted how the snow in the stream gully ended here and was replaced with a water torrent.

But... where was Vincent?

He was about 100 feet above us, making his way down a cliff, into the stream gully to get more turns (3 or 4, it turns out). The route into the stream was "5.2".

Vincent ripping it up in the stream gully.

Vincent came into view, saw us, made a turn or two, saw that there was no more snow very soon, and then began his ascent back out of the gully. Dirty class 4, but there was plenty of slide alder to hold on to.

Vincent getting out of the stream gully. Note how his Seth Pistols add a colourful touch to the slide alder.

Back into the trees, and in a short time we popped back out on the highway, 300 paces from the car.

Click on the photo for the full-size panorma from Bonanza, Corteo, Black, Repulse, Fisher, Arriva, Greybeard, Logan, Klawatti glacier, Mesahchie, Kimtah, to Cosho.