After a winter of unsettled avalanche conditions, the prospect of a blue bird day with low danger on a North-facing slope was incredibly exciting. The motivation carried us through the 4:30am wakeup in Seattle and 5am city departure to drive Highway 20 to its winter gate at the Ross Dam Trailhead.
Leaving the cars just after 8am, we skinned the road for about 0.7 miles before putting the skis on our backs, cutting through the woods, and catching the trail where it climbed up steeply near Happy Creek. There was a good boot pack through the woods and we ended up walking just shy of 2 miles from the car before switching back to skinning.
We started catching views to the North as we climbed higher and the trees thinned out. It was a beautiful day with a bunch of other parties on their way up. It was smooth sailing all the way to the top, where we arrived just shy of 5 hours after leaving the car. Views of the North Cascades were stellar and we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch while taking them in.
The ski down was really fun with a few inches of light, newer snow on top of a supportive base with no signs of instability. We cut under the North face and headed down the fun terrain there into an open gully, then. back to our skin track. The ski out was uneventful, with really efficient and fun side-slipping through trees at the end on buttery corn snow. We made it to the road 8 hours after leaving the car and pushed ourselves without skins the last bit to the cars in another 15 minutes. It felt luxurious to finish with plenty of daylight—great way to kick off the “spring” season.