Snowy Lakes April 7-8 2000

The terrain around Snowy Lakes.

Back on the North Cascades highway for the third weekend in a row. This time, Matt and I head up Swamp Creek, right across the highway from where we were last week. Another couple of months, and I'll have explored all the trailless side valleys near Rainy Pass.

Our path took us up the right side of the creek. Beckey describes this cross-country route as "an easy 3 miles" to Methow Pass. And I seem to remember something about open forest, but flipping through the Beckey guide, I couldn't find that mentioned anywhere. At any rate, we were expecting straightforward travel. We didn't get it. Swamp Creek really really sucks. We encountered some of the densest forest I've seen in these parts, considering there was supposed to be snow on the ground covering the brush. I can't imagine anyone going in here in summer. The way up to Repulse/Fisher basin was a breeze by comparison.

Climbing out of Swamp Creek valley

When we came to a big avalanche clearing, we finally ditched the forest for the now less-gorgey stream bed. Much faster. To get to Snowy Lakes, we headed up the right side of the outlet stream. The forest is open here, although it's a bit exposed. The left side might be better. All in all, I think it took about six hours from the highway - it would be longer without snow.

We measured the snow depth at Snowy Lakes to be 5.5 feet. Once the tent was set up and we had rested, we set out in search of some turns. The weather wasn't stellar, so going up to Tower Mountain wasn't attractive. Insteaed, we headed south along a ridge, hoping to get to a northwest-facing bowl that should hold good snow.

Skiing south along the ridge. Mt Hardy in the clouds. The north side of Mt Hardy is pretty cool. Steep, rock buttresses and narrow couloirs. Beckey says it doesn't have any classic lines, but there are technical climbing challenges. I suppose that's true. We saw/heard an avalanche come down one of the couloirs - the only slide activity we saw all weekend other than ... well, you'll see.

We came within view of the bowl - it looked sweet. The sun was fairly low in the sky, providing some nice light. I had visions of taking a beautiful head on photograph of someone skiing powder, so I asked Matt if he'd like to continue on alone, and I'd get a picture of him from where we were standing.

He continued on, and assured me he'd dig a pit to evaluate the stability of the snowpack before heading down. We noted that there were some mini-cornices on the far side of the bowl, perhaps indicating some cross-loaded slopes.

A few minutes later, I was fiddling with my camera, when I heard him yell something. I looked up, and saw that the entire slope below us had released - I freaked - I didn't know what was going on - it was so sudden. Matt was still there, standing above the fracture. I couldn't believe how big it was, the entire surface of the bowl had slid at once - chunks of slab breaking up and smashing into each other like shattered glass. The wall of snow poured over the a cliffband, and ran down through the lightly-treed slope with lightning speed. "I can't believe this is happening" was all I could think.

The view of the fracture line from where I'd been standing. This is only the upper right portion of the slide. It continues below and behind me. Matt was standing about 40 feet from the top of the crown (left side of the picture, where it comes to a point), when, presumably, he triggered it.

After some yelling back and forth, Matt made his way back to me - verrry carefully, taking a route right along the ridge top, despite any ski-gouging rocks. We noted the debris had made it all the way down to the flats, 700ft below, and traveled a good distance beyond, right to the edge of thick forest.

"oops! hee hee". The view down from where I had been standing. (The patch of debris immediately below us in the picture stopped on a flattish bench).

We toyed with the idea of somehow getting up close to the crown, to measure its height. But we couldn't figure out a good system. There was a sequence of three trees spaced well apart that we might be able to lower each other down with the 100ft piece of 5mm cord I had - but we figured we'd be pressing our luck. Best just to get out of here.

Another view of the slide.

Heading back along the ridge, we were suprised to see the fracture line had propagated over a rib, and onto the next slope.

Ok - last picture of the slide. The crown is in red, with the debris runout outlined in pink, going well off the picture. The letters show where we were when it happened. The whole thing is 300 yards wide (3 football fields!), and the total distance it traveled was about 1/3 of a mile. You can't pick it out in this picture, but a distinct fracture line continued through the fairly forested area on the far right - verrry unstable.

We skied back to our camp, and promptly moved the tent a hundred feet to the right, which was more on a ridge, instead of at the bottom of the south-facing open gully. Then we ate dinners of too-dry couscous, and "macaroni and cheese soup". It was a cold night, but we stayed dry and toasty in our sleeping bags. We got up mid-morning ... I took an urgent pee, and then ate a breakfast of oatmeal soup. I must fine-tune my water judging abilities.

Sunday morning. Tower Mountain in the background.

The weather looked somewhat promising, so we decided to try to summit Goldenhorn, the summit of which had been in a cloud since we got here yesterday. It was to remain that way.

Thinking south-facing slopes would be nice and safe, we decided to just "head up". But somewhere along the flats, on a 10-degree west-facing "slope", we heard the telltale big "whoooomp!" of unstable snow. Geez! We carefully navigated up the most-gentle-way-possible, never exceeding 20 degrees, to the ridgeline, and proceeded along the wind ridges, well back from the cornices. Occasionally there would be a big "identation" in the ridge, with a steep snow couloir at its head, but we could never get a good view over the cliffs and cornices.

Matt skis up the ridge towards Goldenhorn. Goldenhorn has a beautiful, wide open, smooth, 30-35 degree south slope that probably goes on for 2000 vertical feet, but we sure as hell weren't going to ski it.

Eventually, we made it to a 7800ft sub-summit of Goldenhorn, and decided to avoid going any further - the clouds were not getting any better. We trundled some rocks, but it's not very satisfying when there's a lot of snow on the trundle slope. We then broke off small chunks of cornice with some rocks, which was a bit more fun, but we still couldn't really see where they were going, so we gave up and headed down.

The only action shot of the weekend. Woohoo! Look at that action. Matt speeds along the Goldenhorn-Tower barrier ridge. Tower Mountain in the background. On the way in, I had been wondering if it was possible to do a summit ski descent of Tower, since it's "only" class 3, which could easily be covered by snow. It looked pretty dicey though.

On the descent, Matt had the craaaazy idea of actually skiing down to the flats (i.e. on 30 degree slopes), instead of along the ridge as far as possible. What was he thinking? Crazy risk-taker!!

Ok, one more slide picture. This is a close-up view from the bottom (standing in the debris), looking up to the upper left side of the slide. That crown must be >3 feet thick! "Sticking to the trees" would be a bad idea here - it would get you injured (or worse) quite promptly. The area on the left seems to have slid almost to the ground.

Once down, we headed even further down, back over to yesterday's avalanche slope. We poked around in the debris at the bottom. Hmm. Yeah, there was a lot.

We took the righthand side of the Snowy Lakes outlet back to the valley bottom. It was quite nice - or, it would have been quite nice, except it was breakable crust topped with a few inches of dry powder. We practised our log-jumping skills.

Back in the valley bottom, we saw fresh bear prints criss-crossing our old ski tracks from yesterday. Cool. Once Swamp Creek became gorgey, we took to the opposite bank (north) that we came in on. A little bit of nasty brush, then it was actually not bad for a while, and then nasty again near the highway, where the thin thin snowpack, and occasional bare forest floor, made the going difficult.

End of story

Some reflection on the avalanche. Were we being safe? Matt was traveling near the top of the slope in question. Cornices (overhanging the opposite side) and summit rocks made it not very feasible to travel right along the ridge top, so he was 20 feet or so below. What would have happened if he'd been a few feet lower on the slope?
What would have happened if I hadn't stayed where I was to take a picture. Would my extra weight have caused the fracture line to be higher up, entraining us in the slide?
Then again, how was Matt supposed to assess the slope without me around to give him a belay or something? There wasn't really any safe place to dig a pit. No trees or flat areas to stand above. To get a representative sample, he would have to have descended further down the slope, no doubt triggering it and possibly getting caught in the slide. The fact that we were wearing beacons probably wouldn't have helped much in this slide. There were many trees to hit on the way down, at high speed, and a cliff to go over.
It scares me to think how many times I've skied slopes this season without doing a real full snowpack analysis. Then again, even the most casual assessment of this particular slope would have revealed very unstable conditions. And several warning signs did pop up - I had made a mental note of the numerous flag trees (no uphill branches), which were fairly unique to this slope in this area, indicating it slides often. And I noted the potential cross-loading of this windward slope. However, I'm not sure cross-loading was the reason for the slab, since it propagated so easily around the whole bowl.