[John Morrow]

For such a bitty trip I am almost embarrassed to post, but this is a very pretty area and was sunny when most of the Cascades were under clouds and some rain. After all, it was a Backcourt Peak I needed. And I have to admit that it took three tries to finally get to the top of Mission Peak! The first two times had incredible winds, frozen snow, and white out. It just didn’t seem worth it and thus bailed at the base of the final short north slope both prior times. We still had wind and frozen snow yesterday, but at least had sun! The trail from the parking lot to Clara Lake is heavily used by locals and walkable on well packed snow without floatation. Then we kept skinning up frozen snow through the interesting basalt slopes and cliffs to the final north slope. At a snow saddle a few hundred yards east of the highest summit we skied and booted the crest to the summit.

Clara Lake

Where we're headed

Frozen and runneled north slopes

Distant Views

Icy skinning

Nearing the top

Beautiful basalt country

Fun ridge crest to summit

The wind was howling out of the west so we quickly got off the top. The final 20 feet had no snow so we put the skis back on and decended from there on the south side to the ski area to catch a groomer back to the car. At least we got out.

Skiing back to ski area

Southside's losing snow

Scoping Mission's southside

Wenatchee Mountain

I gotta hand it to the snowshoers . They are typically way less finicky about snow conditions for the most part than the backcountry ski crowd. Saturday looked like a great day to do a peak scramble and I stayed home and watched college basketball…..Come on snow!