[Matt]

Date: January 3, 1017 Destination: Excelsior Peak 5712 (USGS Bearpaw) Party: Dicey, peakjunkie, Steph Abegg, Ira Rushwald After months of cloudy dark trips this winter, I finally got a day of sunshine on bright snowy trees.

Excelsior GPS track

Ascending to the bright snowy crest

On the Excelsior Pass trail, previous travelers had packed down a solid snowshoe trench, so we had easy travel upward through the forest. It was shadowy in the woods, but we could see hints of bright sunshine high above. Temperatures were actually less cold than we expected, around 26 degrees when we left the cars.

A bit of sunshine in the forest

Hiking through the forest

Higher hiking brought tantalizing views of the bright terrain above.

A narrow window to a tall narrow tree

Tracks upward through an opening

The snow white summit appears

The sun breaks through

As the terrain opened up, it was like walking through a wonderland of sparkling snow meadows surrounded by brightly flocked trees.

Walking into Wonderland

The existing tread around 5100 feet where the slopes opened up below the summit. Now we were making our own path through pristine terrain. We decided to ascend a lower angled slope to the line of trees on the crest of the south ridge. The rest of the group kicked steps upward, while I kept zigging off sideways to photograph them.

a bright march upward 1

a bright march upward 2

a bright march upward 3

a bright march upward 4

a bright march upward 5

a bright march upward 6

Looking back down our tracks, with one of my zigzags for photos

The wind was blowing hard across the south ridge. This provided a good stable wind crust for kicking steps uphill, but also required putting on every bit of our clothing, face masks, and goggles before leaving the last trees. 7603 Kicking steps up the south ridge

One tiny tree island in the open southeast bowl

Looking out toward the North Fork Nooksack and Mt. Shuksan

Really windy near the top

Looking back down the ridge that we came up

Looking again from higher up

It was too windy for more than a brief pause on top. Ira's nose was approaching frostbite, so he had left already when I arrived.

Carla on the summit

Don on the summit

Me on the summit

Some views from the summit.

Looking northeast to Tomyhoi & Larrabee

Looking east along High Divide, Sefrit on right

Wider view east up the North Fork Nooksack

Looking north toward Canada

Looking west to Excelsior Pass & Church Mtn

Looking south to Baker

We quickly fled down Excelsior's east ridge to get out of the wind. Snowmobilers coming from Canyon Creek had cut tracks in the basins north of the peak up to Excelsior Pass, but had courteously turned aside at the wilderness boundary on the crest. The harsh wind had carved entertaining sastrugi and incipient cornices along the crest.

Sastrugi & tracks going down

Fleeing downhill out of the wind

Wind-carved crest and wind-loaded trees

More wind-loading and incipient cornices

Descending just north of the crest-top trees, I enjoyed how the sun played with the snow-loaded trees, shining around and under and between them.

my poles sneaked into this one

A crescent moon rose above the crest as well

A bit below Excelsior Pass, we were able to escape the wind and sit down for a lunch break. While we were eating, a single raven flew overhead and perched atop a nearby tree, probably hoping for its winter lunch as well. I left a few sandwich fragments behind as a reward for its patience.

Lunch below Excelsior Pass

Steph with one of her candy canes

Our raven companion

We angled back down to meet our uphill tracks, staying along bands of trees where we could, because this side of the basin was more snow-loaded.

The Cold Bunch, ready to head down.

Looking across the basin we came up.

Above us, the summit trees were so white that they made the sky look almost black above them.

Bright trees above and tree shadows below

Very white summit trees

Back at our incoming tracks, we found that one person had worked a lot harder to follow us. A line of boot tracks post-holed up our ascent line toward the summit.

Someone worked hard to follow our track without snowshoes.

With a good cushion of soft powdery snow, we were able to shorten our descent by going straight downhill across some of the longer switchbacks. Stats: 8.5 miles, 3900 gain, 6:30 hours

[Frodo Barefoot]

Looks like a fantastic trip - I should've taken Jan 3 off work to be in the mountains as well. Great photos also!

[Stefan]

nice pics Matt. really nice!

[RichP]

Winter at its best!

[Mesahchie Mark]

Good stuff, Matt! Hard to take a bad pic on a day like that!

[Nancyann]

Spectacular photos, I especially love the stunning contrast between the bright white trees and the deep blue sky!

[fourteen410]

fantastic!

[kite]

Wow that's a lot of eye candy

[mbravenboer]

Super nice. I love how everybody really seems to be enjoying their lunch

[jdk610]

Cool trip!