Tour to Rampart Lakes, February 5-6, 2000
Matt, Greg and Phil finally reached the Gold Creek Sno-park at around 10am Saturday, after a 2 hour drive from Seattle. The normally one hour drive was made longer after it was discovered (somewhere just before North Bend) that Phil had left his avalanche beacon in his truck back in Seattle (in the same spot it was located for the duration of the y2k trip, for those that know the story).
Greg, cuttin' the switchbacks of the logging road, in a nice patch of old growth.
Greg parked his car in the closest available spot to the trailhead. He wondered weather the snowmobile guy in front of him would have enough room to load his machines back into his trailer. Matt said "yeah, for sure, he can just pull out and do it". We began unpacking the car. A nice machiner drove by, stopped, and said "You guys better move this car. You're not gonna have much of car left if you don't. They're just gonna back right into ya.", and then took off.
Matt ascending out of the depths of Rocky Run in gladed terrain.
A few minutes later, a nicer 'biler came by and better explained the situation. Needless to say, under the threat of car-destruction-by-angry-budweiser-drinkin'-big-screen-TV-watching-4x4-Dodge-Ram-drivin'-four-machine-ownin'-snowmobiler dudes, we decided to repark. So we emptied out all the gear, and while another well-intentioned backcountry skier attempted to argue with a machiner about the parking situation, Greg drove his car to the next available, safe spot.
The skier-snowmobiler tension is high at Gold Creek Sno-park.
We readied our packs. A ranger truck drove by with a snowmobile in tow behind it (there had been a search for a missing snowmobiler that day, which ended successfully). A nearby guy working on his machine looked up, saw the ranger's machine, and said to his buddy "Looks like they upgraded this year".
"Yeah", his buddy responded "to an X100F7!". They both snickered.
Phil then realized he was still wearing his hiking boots. Plus, he had socks and an extra fuel bottle which weren't needed. But Greg's car was a half mile away. What to do? Brilliant idea #32: bury the extra gear in a snowbank. Matt dug a whole, Phil bagged the gear, and the deed was done. Phil made a mental note to clearly mark the spot before leaving.
Matt climbs the last steep bit of slope above Lake Lillian. Keechelus Lake (dark blue) can be seen way in the background, our starting point.
We headed up the Mt. Margaret logging road, occasionally cutting the switchbacks, climbing quickly on the hard crusty snow in the trees. The forest was beautiful. It looked like old growth since it was so open, but the trees in some places were in suspiciously straight lines.
About an hour after leaving, Phil realized he hadn't marked the spot where the gear was buried. Doh!
We passed the only other set of backcountry skiers we saw, which included, in a never-before-seen-in-Washington-event, a woman. They were just doing a day trip, and we pitied their descent, because the conditions had been nothing but crust so far.
We followed a branch of the road that dropped slightly into Rocky Run, and followed it to the head of the valley. There was a two-tier cliff band thing we needed to negotiate to reach Lake Lillian. We picked the most forested way up, and it worked more or less, with only a slight descent necessary to navigate around the rocks. In doing this, we left the clearcut territory and entered the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Phil noticed some ice-climbing possibilities. Soon, we arrived at the lake. The wind was strong here. We crossed the wind-packed snow on the lake and decided on a way up over the basin walls encircling the lake. As we climbed higher, the snow became quite icy, and we decided to remove our skis on the steepening slope, in favour of post-holing. We crested the ridge, and skied down softer north-facing snow a hundred feet or so to a clump of trees that became our campsite. All in all, it took us about 6 hours, at a not-too-quick pace. We took a few more short runs on good snow (wind-packed powder, not crusty), before settling in for the night. Overnight, it snowed a few inches.
Sunday morning as the clouds burned off.
Wispy clouds over Mt. Margaret. It is important to imagine this beautiful morning scene with the whine of snow machines in your head.
Sunday morning was beautiful as the snow stopped and the clouds began to dissipate somewhat. Over breakfast we belted out some eighties tunes. We continued north along the rolling, "knolly" plateau. This was sublime alpine meadow territory. However, upon reaching any high point, we could hear the whine of snowmobiles off in the distance, down in the valleys. Though we were in protected wilderness, most of the nearby valleys were not. Eventually we came to the ridge overlooking Rampart Lakes, 500ft below. We climbed for some extra vertical and then took off down some pretty cool terrain. It was the extreme opposite of the "wide, bull-dozed to oblivion, big flat smooth" runs you might see at The Summit. The angle was never the same, little gullies and knolls everywhere. Good snow. Yeah!
Our run down to Rampart Lakes
See the funky cornice in the background?
We crossed the lakes, ate lunch, and took in the view. The clouds intermitently covered and uncovered the surrounding peaks. We were amazed at the untapped ski potential of this place, most of it just beyond day-trip range. And so close to Seattle! Over the food break, we decided not to continue to Alta mountain (which was still in the clouds at this point), but to instead yoyo the slopes around the lake, which had some fun'n'whacky terrain.
The elusive Rampart Lakes (gentle side of Rampart Ridge on the left)
Alta mountain pops out of the clouds.
I toppled over while skiing up, and thought it made for a nice picture.
Now that the sun had begun to have its way with last night's new snow, Greg was having difficulty skiing up. He would accumulate hilarious amounts of snow on his skins. Despite the fact that both he and Phil shared the same brand of skins (Greg somehow seems to have most of the same climbing and ski equipment as Phil), and they both used glopstopper, Phil didn't have this problem.
Crossing the Rampart Lakes basin.
After digging a pit and deeming the slope pretty safe, we skied another excellent run down a steep face followed by a gentle half-pipe-like gully. The snow was much better than we expected. Not quite powder, not quite corn, but something in between, something pretty darn good.
Matt tames the steeps
Then, it was back to camp to pack up. By now, Phil's stomach and intestines were not feeling very good. Hmm. We ascended to the ridge above Lake Lillian and descended the steep, somewhat slick and exposed slope above the lake. Once past the lake, the snow quality deteriorated considerably, and become standard Snoqualmie Pass glop. We realized we had definitely chosen the right place to be this weekend... high up on the plateau. Our runs weren't very long, but the snow was consistently good.
Matt frolicking in a veritable fairyland of alpine meadow!
We went headed down into Rocky Run via a different route than before... but it worked beautifully, providing a direct, skiable (well, okay, it would have been skiable if it wasn't glop) route down that bypassed the cliffs. It was then a straight shot onto the logging road that penetrated the basin. At this point we entered the thick cloud layer we had seen from above all day. At this point we also smelled snowmobile exhaust wafting through the foggy air. Shortly thereafter, we saw fresh machine tracks. For a moment, I though "wo! they're not allowed up here"... I guess the solitude we had experienced all weekend made me think this place was untouchable by machines, and it had been, but we were now just outside the wilderness boundary, as evidenced by the clearcuts on the flanking valley walls. We veered off the logging road lower down and headed into said clearcut, aiming for a more direct line down to the road. Matt expertly found a second old, sometimes overgrown, logging road, and we schussed down it. It dumped us out only a hundred yards from the trailhead. All in all, a very quick and efficient descent from Rampart Lakes. We were justly proud of ourselves.
Beautiful clearcut slopes above Rocky Run. Loggers could use this as their computer wallpaper.
The trip was not quite over though, as we needed to uncover Phil's buried boots and fuel bottle. Matt grabbed a shovel, and Phil accompanied him alongside the road. Writhing in pain from abdominal cramps, Phil would point to a section of snowbank that looked "disturbed", and Matt would dig dig dig! 15 minutes of probing turned up nothing. Some luckly snowmobiler is going to get some well-used hiking boots and a fuel bottle this spring.