Huntington Beach, late November, 2012
I spun and started paddling hard as a glassy peak lumbered in my direction. Since moving to Seattle I didn't get the chance to surf much anymore, and an unusually fun run of surf while I was home for Thanksgiving had me frantically pawing at every wave I could get my hands on. I jumped to my feet and took a few high backside pumps as the wave drained off the sandbar. As it closed out I tried straightening out and pointing my board to the beach, but I caught a rail and was flipped at high speed over my board. Slamming upside down and back first into the shallow water, I instantly felt something snap in my back. "That didn't feel right," I thought as I compressed into a ball and the wave rolled over me. I popped to the surface and slowly tested my limbs. All vital systems appeared to be functioning, and though my back felt strange there wasn't any severe pain. I contemplated calling it a day, but the surf was going off and I was heading back to Seattle in a couple days. Healing could wait.
Summit West, November 30th, 2012
Heavy snowflakes fell silently through the orange glow of the highway lights as Pedro and I pulled off I-90 and parked in the empty Summit West lot. I had skied every month since the previous December but hadn't skied yet in November, and there were only hours left before my first turns all year bid would expire. (For those not in the know, "Turns All Year," or TAY for short, is the northwest tradition of skiing at least once a month for twelve months straight.) We both needed to be back in Redmond for work at a reasonable hour so we found ourselves pulling skis and splitboard out of the car at 6am this morning.
I was doing my best to ignore the painful knot in my back that had been aching constantly for the week since my surfing accident. I had avoided going to a doctor thus far because of the worst case scenario playing through my head.
"You need to stop all athletic activity until December," the doctor would say.
"But doctor, if I don't ski this week then I won't get turns all year!"
"I can't let you go skiing with your back like this."
"What if I do something easy? I only need to connect a few turns for it to count."
"I'm not exaggerating when I say that skiing Summit West will probably kill you."
The doctor's advice could wait until the afternoon. We began skinning around the early season shrubs poking through the thin snowpack. Our skins crunched on the crust under the fresh snow as we made steady progress up the hill. By the time we reached the top some dim November light was soaking through the thick clouds and I was feeling pretty good. My back pain had subsided to as ignorable of a level as I had experienced all week, and I was starting to think I might even rip a few stylish turns through the brush. We transitioned quickly and I pointed my tips straight ahead through the thin powder.
Mt. Rainier, January 23rd, 2014
I didn't start ski touring until February 2012, the third month of my first TAY, so even after finishing my first TAY I felt guilty that the first two months were spent inbounds, my little chicken legs shuttled up the mountain by chairlifts. Worse yet, inbounds on a snowboard! I clung onto my second TAY bid by a thread, on two occasions waiting until the end of the month, which in one case led to getting slightly lost and down climbing a cliff in a blizzard...but that's a story for another time. I had toured for eleven months in a row, and though I had claimed my second TAY earlier in the month at Stevens, this would be my first "tours all year."
Phil and I were heading south to Paradise Valley on Mt. Rainier, excited by the prospect of skiing corn - common term for the very carve-able snow that results from repeated melt-freeze cycles during warm clear weather, and is normally only seen in late spring and early summer - in January. A couple weeks of high pressure over the northwest had created an "inversion layer," with cold fog flooding Seattle and summer like weather just above in the mountains.
We were approaching Eatonville - one in a string of small towns I know by its gas stations and largely unremarkable food options for post-Rainier calorie replenishment - when it occurred to me that Amar might be heading up to Rainier as well. Amar is a friend of Phil's who lives for skiing Rainier on days like this, and had in fact posted a couple trip reports from Rainier in the previous two weeks. I had met him once at a party but never skied with him, and asked Phil if he knew what Amar was up to today. One text message later we discovered that Amar was five minutes ahead of us.
We worked out a car shuttle arrangement so we could start up from Paradise and ski all the way down to the Nisqually Bridge, 1500 feet lower than Paradise and several miles down the road. Because we skied with Amar, a man famous amongst the northwest backcountry skiing community for insanely comprehensive trip reports, I'm spared the duty of documenting this day, and I refer all interested parties to Amar's epic in-progress trip report. Until I find the inspiration to write more about this day, I will simply note that I crossed "Muir to Bridge" - a continuous ski descent of over 6000 feet from Camp Muir to the Nisqually Bridge - off my northwest bucket list, and leave you with a photo of Phil and some afternoon corn.
Mt. St. Helens, January 25th, 2014
The early morning start was especially miserable this day. After 3 hours of fitful sleep I woke up to my backup alarm at 4:15am to find that my Thermarest had sprung a leak and completely deflated. Will and Jonas, sleeping peacefully on their still-inflated air mattresses, had slept through their 4am alarm. Jonas had a long standing 5:30pm dinner commitment in Seattle so we needed an early start. Ever since getting terrible leg cramps on a warm May climb of St. Helens last year, I've been aggressive about pre-hydrating for climbs, and this morning I forced myself to chug two liters of water with electrolyte tablets. After visiting the Sno Park outhouse to release a couple "mud falcons," we hit the snowless trail just after 5. I spent the first hour fighting back nausea as the reservoir of water in my stomach conspired with the food hangover from our late night stop at the Chehalis Denny's just hours earlier.
I started feeling better as the trees thinned and the mountain loomed into view. The sharp pyramid of Mt. Hood appeared to the south as the eastern sky dimly lit up. Soon the shadow of the earth streaked a low diagonal from the eastern horizon across the Columbia River and over the Portland city lights. A tangerine stripe burned upwards into the receding night sky, grazing the top of Mt. Adams.
We switched to skins, but after some shenanigans with ice and rock we put skis back on packs and booted up a long ridge. When the terrain opened up above the ridge we stopped for a food and water break around 6000'. I cracked open my pizza bag and tore into a slice of supreme pizza; to be clear, this is the only time it's acceptable to eat DiGiornio at 8 in the morning. Will and Jonas resumed booting while I transitioned to skins with ski crampons, metal prongs that hook into the bindings and get driven into the snow by the weight of the ski boot with every step. The morning snow was grabby on the skins and let out a satisfying crunch with every step onto the ski crampons, perfect for setting a steep skin track straight uphill.
A few rolls later, with boot penetration shrinking, Jonas switched to skins and ski crampons and Will switched to boot crampons. The slope steepened a bit and as we rounded a corner we gained a lot of exposure. The skinning was very secure with ski crampons, but the snow was firm and if you somehow lost footing and started to fall, there was probably 1000 feet of runout below. Ice axe on pack, I started to feel exposed. Jonas caught up to me and asked me to get his ice axe off his pack. There's nothing to get you in the wrong headspace like standing still on a steep exposed slope, and my confidence faded a little more with every second I spent fiddling with the straps on Jonas' pack. I wanted my ice axe but didn't want to risk getting knocked off balance while retrieving it. Choking back my fear I stepped slowly up the final few hundred feet to the next roll. There was only one more bowl to the crater rim from here but with confidence wavering I pulled out my ice axe and transitioned to boot crampons.
Before long I joined Jonas and Will at the top. There was just a breath of wind, and incredible views of Rainier, Goat Rocks, Adams, Hood, and Jefferson. We started transitioning as the second group of skiers approached the crater rim. My regular ski partner Jerry was supposed to have started about an hour behind us with a large group from UW. I didn't see him so assumed this was a different group until one of the guys recognized me by my Maestrale ski boots. "Hey, didn't we ski together at Stevens last week?"
This became the theme of the increasingly social descent as every climber we passed on the mountain was either friends with Jerry, or Jerry. The first 2000 feet were incredible: bowl after bowl of ripe corn punctuated by a few stops to rest legs and chat with the congo line of UW climbers. Even below that the snow was still great; it never got sticky or manky, only more rock speckled. We connected a series of gullies down to treeline where it was absolutely baking in the midday sun.
Besides a couple carries the snow was skiable down the Swift Creek trail to about a mile from the trailhead. In the minutes before we switched to booting the snowy trail started showing more and more brown patches. As I sped towards one particularly brown patch I misjudged it as dirt covered by a thin layer of translucent slush. I didn't realize my mistake until the moment before my skis ground onto bare dirt and rock, painfully driving home the fact that dirt has a significantly higher coefficient of friction of than a thin layer of translucent slush. Flipping over the handlebars, I crumpled into a groaning pile right in front of a group of hikers.
Before long the welcome glint of cars shone through the forest maze, a portent of Alaskan Amber, dry clothes, and deodorant. We made it back to Seattle before dark, Jonas made his birthday dinner, and I promptly passed out on my couch.
Some TAY Photos, February 2013 - January 2014
I spun and started paddling hard as a glassy peak lumbered in my direction. Since moving to Seattle I didn't get the chance to surf much anymore, and an unusually fun run of surf while I was home for Thanksgiving had me frantically pawing at every wave I could get my hands on. I jumped to my feet and took a few high backside pumps as the wave drained off the sandbar. As it closed out I tried straightening out and pointing my board to the beach, but I caught a rail and was flipped at high speed over my board. Slamming upside down and back first into the shallow water, I instantly felt something snap in my back. "That didn't feel right," I thought as I compressed into a ball and the wave rolled over me. I popped to the surface and slowly tested my limbs. All vital systems appeared to be functioning, and though my back felt strange there wasn't any severe pain. I contemplated calling it a day, but the surf was going off and I was heading back to Seattle in a couple days. Healing could wait.
Summit West, November 30th, 2012
Heavy snowflakes fell silently through the orange glow of the highway lights as Pedro and I pulled off I-90 and parked in the empty Summit West lot. I had skied every month since the previous December but hadn't skied yet in November, and there were only hours left before my first turns all year bid would expire. (For those not in the know, "Turns All Year," or TAY for short, is the northwest tradition of skiing at least once a month for twelve months straight.) We both needed to be back in Redmond for work at a reasonable hour so we found ourselves pulling skis and splitboard out of the car at 6am this morning.
I was doing my best to ignore the painful knot in my back that had been aching constantly for the week since my surfing accident. I had avoided going to a doctor thus far because of the worst case scenario playing through my head.
"You need to stop all athletic activity until December," the doctor would say.
"But doctor, if I don't ski this week then I won't get turns all year!"
"I can't let you go skiing with your back like this."
"What if I do something easy? I only need to connect a few turns for it to count."
"I'm not exaggerating when I say that skiing Summit West will probably kill you."
The doctor's advice could wait until the afternoon. We began skinning around the early season shrubs poking through the thin snowpack. Our skins crunched on the crust under the fresh snow as we made steady progress up the hill. By the time we reached the top some dim November light was soaking through the thick clouds and I was feeling pretty good. My back pain had subsided to as ignorable of a level as I had experienced all week, and I was starting to think I might even rip a few stylish turns through the brush. We transitioned quickly and I pointed my tips straight ahead through the thin powder.
The slope steepened and I picked up speed before sliding into my first turn. Crruuuuuuunnnnccchhh. My back exploded with pain. "Shit!" There was still another 800 feet to the car. Every little undulation in the terrain jolted my back into a new wave of pain. I continued slowly, gritting my teeth through every turn, and within 20 minutes we had completed our descent.
"You made it! Turns all year!" Pedro congratulated me as we reached the parking lot.
"Yay," I moaned halfheartedly as I collapsed, skis still on, feet from the car. "I think I'm going to see a doctor now."
I wouldn't ski again until February. The next two months would bring incredible conditions to the Cascades. December provided early season powder, including 39 inches in one night at Stevens Pass, and January followed with weeks of high pressure and summer-like conditions on the volcanoes. I passed this time in the cold fog of the Puget Sound lowlands below the inversion layer, ignoring the weather and snow reports while my back healed. Consequently, December and January were the two most productive and social months of my adult life.
Mt. Rainier, January 23rd, 2014
I didn't start ski touring until February 2012, the third month of my first TAY, so even after finishing my first TAY I felt guilty that the first two months were spent inbounds, my little chicken legs shuttled up the mountain by chairlifts. Worse yet, inbounds on a snowboard! I clung onto my second TAY bid by a thread, on two occasions waiting until the end of the month, which in one case led to getting slightly lost and down climbing a cliff in a blizzard...but that's a story for another time. I had toured for eleven months in a row, and though I had claimed my second TAY earlier in the month at Stevens, this would be my first "tours all year."
Phil and I were heading south to Paradise Valley on Mt. Rainier, excited by the prospect of skiing corn - common term for the very carve-able snow that results from repeated melt-freeze cycles during warm clear weather, and is normally only seen in late spring and early summer - in January. A couple weeks of high pressure over the northwest had created an "inversion layer," with cold fog flooding Seattle and summer like weather just above in the mountains.
We were approaching Eatonville - one in a string of small towns I know by its gas stations and largely unremarkable food options for post-Rainier calorie replenishment - when it occurred to me that Amar might be heading up to Rainier as well. Amar is a friend of Phil's who lives for skiing Rainier on days like this, and had in fact posted a couple trip reports from Rainier in the previous two weeks. I had met him once at a party but never skied with him, and asked Phil if he knew what Amar was up to today. One text message later we discovered that Amar was five minutes ahead of us.
We worked out a car shuttle arrangement so we could start up from Paradise and ski all the way down to the Nisqually Bridge, 1500 feet lower than Paradise and several miles down the road. Because we skied with Amar, a man famous amongst the northwest backcountry skiing community for insanely comprehensive trip reports, I'm spared the duty of documenting this day, and I refer all interested parties to Amar's epic in-progress trip report. Until I find the inspiration to write more about this day, I will simply note that I crossed "Muir to Bridge" - a continuous ski descent of over 6000 feet from Camp Muir to the Nisqually Bridge - off my northwest bucket list, and leave you with a photo of Phil and some afternoon corn.
Mt. St. Helens, January 25th, 2014
The early morning start was especially miserable this day. After 3 hours of fitful sleep I woke up to my backup alarm at 4:15am to find that my Thermarest had sprung a leak and completely deflated. Will and Jonas, sleeping peacefully on their still-inflated air mattresses, had slept through their 4am alarm. Jonas had a long standing 5:30pm dinner commitment in Seattle so we needed an early start. Ever since getting terrible leg cramps on a warm May climb of St. Helens last year, I've been aggressive about pre-hydrating for climbs, and this morning I forced myself to chug two liters of water with electrolyte tablets. After visiting the Sno Park outhouse to release a couple "mud falcons," we hit the snowless trail just after 5. I spent the first hour fighting back nausea as the reservoir of water in my stomach conspired with the food hangover from our late night stop at the Chehalis Denny's just hours earlier.
I started feeling better as the trees thinned and the mountain loomed into view. The sharp pyramid of Mt. Hood appeared to the south as the eastern sky dimly lit up. Soon the shadow of the earth streaked a low diagonal from the eastern horizon across the Columbia River and over the Portland city lights. A tangerine stripe burned upwards into the receding night sky, grazing the top of Mt. Adams.
We switched to skins, but after some shenanigans with ice and rock we put skis back on packs and booted up a long ridge. When the terrain opened up above the ridge we stopped for a food and water break around 6000'. I cracked open my pizza bag and tore into a slice of supreme pizza; to be clear, this is the only time it's acceptable to eat DiGiornio at 8 in the morning. Will and Jonas resumed booting while I transitioned to skins with ski crampons, metal prongs that hook into the bindings and get driven into the snow by the weight of the ski boot with every step. The morning snow was grabby on the skins and let out a satisfying crunch with every step onto the ski crampons, perfect for setting a steep skin track straight uphill.
A few rolls later, with boot penetration shrinking, Jonas switched to skins and ski crampons and Will switched to boot crampons. The slope steepened a bit and as we rounded a corner we gained a lot of exposure. The skinning was very secure with ski crampons, but the snow was firm and if you somehow lost footing and started to fall, there was probably 1000 feet of runout below. Ice axe on pack, I started to feel exposed. Jonas caught up to me and asked me to get his ice axe off his pack. There's nothing to get you in the wrong headspace like standing still on a steep exposed slope, and my confidence faded a little more with every second I spent fiddling with the straps on Jonas' pack. I wanted my ice axe but didn't want to risk getting knocked off balance while retrieving it. Choking back my fear I stepped slowly up the final few hundred feet to the next roll. There was only one more bowl to the crater rim from here but with confidence wavering I pulled out my ice axe and transitioned to boot crampons.
Before long I joined Jonas and Will at the top. There was just a breath of wind, and incredible views of Rainier, Goat Rocks, Adams, Hood, and Jefferson. We started transitioning as the second group of skiers approached the crater rim. My regular ski partner Jerry was supposed to have started about an hour behind us with a large group from UW. I didn't see him so assumed this was a different group until one of the guys recognized me by my Maestrale ski boots. "Hey, didn't we ski together at Stevens last week?"
This became the theme of the increasingly social descent as every climber we passed on the mountain was either friends with Jerry, or Jerry. The first 2000 feet were incredible: bowl after bowl of ripe corn punctuated by a few stops to rest legs and chat with the congo line of UW climbers. Even below that the snow was still great; it never got sticky or manky, only more rock speckled. We connected a series of gullies down to treeline where it was absolutely baking in the midday sun.
Besides a couple carries the snow was skiable down the Swift Creek trail to about a mile from the trailhead. In the minutes before we switched to booting the snowy trail started showing more and more brown patches. As I sped towards one particularly brown patch I misjudged it as dirt covered by a thin layer of translucent slush. I didn't realize my mistake until the moment before my skis ground onto bare dirt and rock, painfully driving home the fact that dirt has a significantly higher coefficient of friction of than a thin layer of translucent slush. Flipping over the handlebars, I crumpled into a groaning pile right in front of a group of hikers.
Before long the welcome glint of cars shone through the forest maze, a portent of Alaskan Amber, dry clothes, and deodorant. We made it back to Seattle before dark, Jonas made his birthday dinner, and I promptly passed out on my couch.
Some TAY Photos, February 2013 - January 2014
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| Before work couloir hunting - Bryant Couloir, February 2013 |
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| Profound Pattys Pow - Yodelin, St. Patrick's Day 2013 |
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| April showers bring April powder - Great Scott Bowl, April 2013 |
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| First volcano summit - Mt. St. Helens, May 2013 |
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| Moonlight skinning, Lunch Counter bivy, windy summit, and SW chutes descent - Mt. Adams, June 2013 |
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| Nisqually Chutes in boardshorts - Mt. Rainier, July 2013 |
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| Solo ski above the Labor Day tourists - Muir Snowfield, August 2013 |
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| Blizzard in Paradise - Mt. Rainier, September 2013 |
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| Early season blower in "The Pit" - North Cascades, October 2013 |
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| The worst 2000 feet of skiing of my life - Alpental, November 2013 |
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| Near 0 degrees Fahrenheit, 60 mph gusts, and styrofoam skinning - Mammoth Lakes, December 2013 |
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| Juneuary corn - Mt. St. Helens, January 2014 |
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