Baker from the top of the gullies. Lookin' good, eh?
May 15-16, 2004
Paul Belitz, Jeff Manor
Last weekend the weather was perfect, but I had two tests on Monday, so I wrestled with my need to ski. So when bad weather was forecasted for the weekend I made a quick decision to call the Man of Bad Weather Skiing, and go to a mountain that attracts all the clouds in the Western Hemisphere. Jeff was enthusiastic as usual, and the Coleman-Deming sounded good for some reason. We decided to go for a two day trip, with a higher bivy than usual. Just for fun. Yeah. The weathermen called for "partly to mostly cloudy, chance of showers, snow level 7000 feet" for both Saturday and Sunday.
We got within a mile of the Heliotrope trailhead before stopping due to a snowdrift. We parked amongst a group of boy scouts. Apparently they were planning a Everest-like siege of the C-D. A senior leader stopped by the car next to us to ask the occupants how many stoves they had. After acertaining the availability of said stoves, he then proceeded explain to us why his pack was so heavy. We immediately started walking up the road.
It was partly sunny was we skinned up the gullies behind the outhouse, and with no wind, horrendously warm, too. we took a nice break when we got to the first roll (~6500) that afforded a view of the mountain. We soon kept going, and soon reached the campsites below the Black Buttes, where we took another rest in the sun. The clouds were building, but that wasn't surprising. We were still feeling strong, and decided to skin to the saddle and bivy. When we got to 7500 it started snowing.
The last thousand feet took a long, long time. The fresh snow was that special Cascade offering, the stuff that's white in the air but melts as soon as it feels the sweet embrace of goretex. Soon our skis had gained an extra ten pounds and skinning was reduced to plodding, since skins don't glide very well when hunks of snow are stuck to them.
We got close to the saddle in a whiteout and decided to dig a cave. Four hours later Jeff finished his creation, and I got my hypothermic ass into it. Ten minutes later I was recharging inside my sleeping bag, in the best snowcave I've ever seen. Kudos to Jeff. He fired up his stove, and afer inhaling the sausages that he had carried up, we slept. We weren't expecting much in the way of good weather in the morning.
In the morning I poked my head out of the cave and was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a continuous cloud layer.....below us. Above us there were 30 Boy Scouts postholing up the Roman Wall with not a cloud in the sky.
Two hours after leaving the cave I was on the summit. Most of the Scouts quit on the other side of the plateau, and we had the summit to ourselves. Shuksan's summit pyramid poked out of the cloud layer, but nothing else could be seen. After relaxing for a while, we hiked back across the plateau and got ready to ski. The Roman Wall had about a foot or so of powder over a crusty base, so we weren't expecting it to be great. But to our delight, the crust was too deep to affect us, and the skiing was nearly effortless. We passed most of the Scouts on the way down, and altogether too quickly we were back at the cave, soaking in the sun and packing our gear.
Unfortunately, we had apparently fulfilled our fun quota for the day. We go into the clouds around 8000 feet. The snow became very sticky. We got down to 7500 feet, and we couldn't see a thing. We traversed over to the gullies at a slow walking pace, in a total whiteout. At one point I thought I was moving until I looked at my ski tips, and realized that I was standing still. Then I nearly fell over from vertigo.
Helped by Jeff's GPS, we eventually got to the correct gully and carefully skied down. When we got to the woods we managed to get below the fog, and we appreciated the visibility for the ten minute hike down the road to the car.
