With Washington State recreation areas beginning a phased reopening as of May 22, Colin and I hoped to make the most of Memorial Day weekend with some ski mountaineering at Washington Pass, outside the National Park boundary. The weather forecast there seemed to be the best in the state, with a good Saturday and potential for Sunday as well, so we loaded up with gear to camp in the back of the car if needed and hit the road a little after 5am on Saturday.
There was very little snow until near Rainy Pass, which seemed to funnel the crowds to fewer places—there must have been 30 cars at the pass. We geared up and were skinning from the car at 8:45am. Having done the tour before, I knew not to follow the summer trail and we made efficient progress straight up into the basin with Lake Ann. The climb up to Heather Pass was a bit slippery and warm, but not too bad and we got to our transition point at the pass in about 1h 15min. The long side-hill descent and skin on the far side went swimmingly and we soaked up the sun in what felt like a beach as we neared the basin below the East Face.
A quick boot pack up the last steep section to the South Ridge saddle got us awesome views of Goode and the rest of the range about 3h 15min into the day. We put the skis on our backs here and made our way up the South Ridge at first, then onto snow in a good boot pack to just below the summit. We stashed the skis here and scrambled higher, getting just below the summit block, but deciding (similarly to everyone else, it seemed), that the last exposed snow slope wasn’t worth testing to gain the last 20 feet or so.
We took in the stellar views for a bit, scrambled back down to our skis, ate lunch, and clicked in for our first turns since March. Oh, what fun! The South Face in perfect spring corn conditions was AWESOME. We cruised down a bit below the saddle, traversed skier’s left, and then boot packed back up to the saddle.
The rest of the tour went fine, with more phenomenal buttery corn skiing, and we made it back to the car about 7 hours after we’d started. So good to be back out. While there were a lot of people doing the route, it didn’t feel absurdly crowded and we had some good moments to ourselves. Just shy of 11 miles with about 5,500 feet of climbing.