[dacker]

This was one of those days when things definitely didn’t go according to plan. The weather was supposed to be nice. Silly_traveler (who I’ll call by her everyday name, Carol) was supposed to finally meet my wife Taehee and go on a winter scramble with us. We were supposed to do a loop trip up from Stevens Pass to the two high points on the Skyline Ridge, informally named Sky Mountain and Tye Peak, and then loop back out via the PCT. Here’s what actually happened: Taehee strained a muscle in her leg and couldn’t come at the last minute, so it was just Carol and me. We drove up to Stevens Pass in the rain after checking at the Skykomish Ranger Station about avalanche conditions (moderate to considerable in our elevation range). It was a light drizzle at the pass, but not too bad. We got on our rain gear, put on our snowshoes right out of the car, and headed up the snowcat trail to Skyline Lake. Since this was going to be a winter scramble (off-trail in very steep, exposed terrain) not just a simple snowshoe hike, along the way I needed to teach Carol how to use her ice ax. So we picked a more-or-less steep spot in the trail and I showed her the basic self-arrest technique, which she practiced for a while:

Self-arrest practice

Dig in your feet, not your knees!

Whew! This is hard work!

Come on, get down on that ax!

The fresh powder was so deep, that it didn’t look like ice axes would really be very helpful, but she got a new ice axe for Christmas and needed to get some practice in, and this was a good opportunity. Crampons would definitely not be useful in the deep snow, so they stayed in the pack. After arriving at Skyline Lake, there was no more trail, although there were a lot of snowshoe and ski tracks going every which way. It was now snowing heavily and visibility was poor, so I had to navigate by compass to get on the ridge above the lake heading towards Sky Mountain. The snow was deep and trail-breaking quite strenuous. We took turns plowing up to our knees up the steep slope. After we crossed an avalanche gulley that looked pretty stable, and felt solid under foot, I decided it was time to dig a test pit and see what the snowpack looked like. I found a shear layer interface about 18” down. While it was not sitting on a crust layer, which would be extreme, I was able to get it to shear off, indicating a somewhat unstable snowpack. But since we were on top of the ridge, we were reasonably safe and continued on through a granite boulder area, to where we had to traverse below a very steep and exposed false summit on the ridge. At this point we came face-to-face with debris from a very recent minor slide:

Path of the small slide that convinced us to turn around

Slide debris

That, coupled with the steep and exposed traverse covered with loose powder that lay beyond, made it pretty easy to decide that this was as far as we would be going today! So we headed back the way we had come, safely re-crossed the earlier avy gulley, and got back to the car about 1:30. Stats: RT - 3 miles; elevation - 1300’. A few more pictures:

This was above us waiting to come down

Boulders on Skyline Ridge

Boulders on the way back

Re-crossing the avalanche gulley

Safely across!

Stevens Pass from Skyline Ridge

Well, this was too early to call it a day, so what to do?? Carol suggested Wallace Falls, a reasonably short snowless hike that was right on our way home. Sounds good, lets go! The rain had almost stopped by the time we got to the trail head sometime around 2:15. We had a 6 mile hike ahead of us and about 2½ hours of daylight left, so we decided to go light and left our packs in the car, taking just a few essentials in our pockets. The rain was not over so we wore our full rain gear. I was hard-pressed to keep up with Carol. When silly drops her pack, she really travels! But I never got all that far behind and we stopped to look at each of the three falls: lower, middle (bottom and top), and upper. We left the upper falls at 3:45, having about an hour of daylight left and really hauled it down the trail…at least as fast as my aging bones could manage! We got back before dark, but were cold and wet as the rain had returned in earnest and had accompanied us for pretty much the entire hike. The car's heater was most welcome. Stats: RT - 6 miles; elevation - 1400’ in, 200’ out. I didn’t take my camera on this hike. Carol took hers, maybe she’ll post a few pics of it and some more of Skyline Ridge.

[silly_traveler]

Nice trip with awesome company About the views.... We stopped for hot chocolate in Sultan and teriyaki in Everett Some pictures of the snowshoe portion of the trip

skyline lake

rick breakin' trail

cool rocks

some summit

come back down

puppy

Some pictures of the non-snowshoe portion of the trip

mossy fingers

lower fall

super tall trees

[Opus]

Cool pics! So much more snow than when I was up there. I love those boulders on the ridge. I was turned back in that same general area by avalanche conditions too, hopefully I'll make it back there this year to continue on the ridge.

[dicey]

Sounds like you made the right call based on conditions These reports from the last few days sound a bit hairy!

[Randy]

Conditions were certainly a bit a sketch up at Stevens on Saturday. Skiing out of bounds near Big Chief, we saw some big slides and managed to set off a small one while skiing in the trees.

[ActionBetty]

Sillys getting wild with the Ice axe! Great pics, glad you guys were safe and had a groovy day