After a great tour on Ruby Mountain two weeks prior and with a decent forecast for a day trip Saturday, Adam gave me a call, asking if I wanted to do the Rock-Howard-Mastiff traverse. This one had been on my list for a while, especially since I’d slogged up to Rock Mountain twice before on skis only to encounter whiteout conditions and turn around before the summit. Colin was interested as well, so we joined forces, targeting a meetup at 6am in the Stevens Pass parking lot to arrange the car shuttle and get rolling at a reasonable hour.
We started skinning up for Rock at 7am, finding the low elevation terrain to be pretty patchy, especially anything with Western exposure. We switched back and forth quite a bit between skinning and booting and the snow varied from isothermal slush to refrozen crust. We eventually put ski crampons on to finish the steeper part of the ridge. All of these shenanigans lowered morale a bit, but once we gained the easier ridge, could see Rock above us, and had warm sunshine hit us, we knew it would be a good day.
There was more new snow than we expected in the alpine, but our tests show it was right-side up and well bonded to the snow below except for a few places where there was a more pronounced solar crust. We skinned most of the way up to the southern false summit of Rock before switching to boots for the final hundred feet or so. The summit had been in and out of the clouds during our ascent and we oscillated between full whiteout and gorgeous views as we traversed the ridge to the true summit. We made it here in 4.5 hours, which was right on the guidebook time and felt pretty good given the conditions.
Adam was excited about the steep North couloir, meanwhile my 2 days on alpine skis all winter had me looking for an easier start to the day. Colin and I headed down the West face for a few hundred feet before cutting right over the ridge and down below Adam so we could keep eyes on him. This was the best skiing of the day and it was awesome. A slightly rimey crust easily broke and exposed light, fluffy goodness on the West face, then the North side was foot-deep powder. We could hear Adam whooping the whole way down.
Our traverse to the NE shoulder of Rock went smoothly, staying a bit higher than the guidebook’s beta and arriving a little shy of 5.5 hours from the car. The East face down to Crescent Lake was great for a hundred feet and then turned much heavier, with lots of wet slide debris. We enjoyed a snack at the lake, looking back up at our turns, before putting our heads down for the climb up Howard. We stayed climber’s right for this ascent, sticking in the trees, given how warm it was on the South-facing slope. The climb took about 1 hour and 20 minutes, bringing us to the top of our second peak in a little under 7.5 hours from the car.
We (I) errantly went too far down Howard looking for a break in the cornice and had to boot back up a little ways to find it by the very first thumb-shaped rock, much closer to the top than expected. The ski down Howard’s East face was pretty low angle and the conditions were fun with just enough solar effect to make it faster and buttery lower down. We opted for a sweeping traverse above Canaan Lake since the skiing wasn’t worth losing more vert for. Another quick snack at the bottom and we were on the move up to Mastiff.
From Howard, Mastiff doesn’t look like a mountain so much as a glorified hill. That said, the SW face was steep enough that the sun-softened snow was slick and skinning was tricky. We stuck to the small trees on the climber’s right for the same reason as on our climb up Howard. This climb went quickly in a half hour, putting us on the summit 8.75 hours from the car. We found a nice exit from the North end of the summit and did another long, sweeping descent, this time into the gully exiting at Lost Lake.
We hit lighter snow that stuck to our skins on the climb up from Lost Lake. By the end of that climb we were all excited to be heading down. We were at 9h 45m at the point where we ripped skins and headed through the trees. To Merritt Lake was pretty easy. We pushed ourselves across and started going down very low-angle terrain from here. It was tough to stay far-enough right and we found ourselves drifting away from the summer trail. We eventually decided we needed to boot up the ridge to descend from the right spot, which was a bit painful, but short lived.
The ski out from here was pretty heinous. Recent winds had caused tree branches and needles to fall everywhere and the snow coverage was high enough to want to ski vs. walk, but low enough that slide alder was poking through everywhere. The snow was also classic, low-elevation spring concrete. We survival skied our way down, eventually hitting the forest road, which went up and was flat enough that we got quite a final arm and ab workout, not wanting to transition one more time. The descent took much longer than we’d hoped, but we still made it to the car in under 12 hours.
I’m glad I did the tour and the sections in the alpine were both gorgeous and fun. That said, I won’t feel the need to come back—the approach and descent had me yearning for ski tours with a much higher percentage of the terrain above tree line.
