March 24, 2012 - Mt Catherine

After some monumental snow accumulations through March, Nicole and I along with friends Dave and Kristen set out to go ski some of the newly fallen powder. Thoughts of Paradise were scrapped after high elevation south facing terrain was deemed too likely to load up under the sun. We set our sights on Silver Peak's North facing bowls. While climbing past Mt Catherine, however, we decided to just hit that up instead, why ski past good looking slopes of powder??

Our ascent up Hyak face; down into Hidden Valley nordic trails; up an established skin track to Mt. Catherine summit

This happened to be the second time recently that I've looked to repeat a ski summit from last year with different friends. Previously this year I had set out for Jove Peak and was turned back just shy of the summit by an active, but shallow, surface layer. Summit or not, I've found the return trip to be much more navigationally friendly. All the planning on Google Earth doesn't equate to having been somewhere looking at the terrain, especially in the winter! This time we avoided any stream crossings which made the last Mt Catherine trip so much fun:

Skye attempting the crux stream crossing during last year's ascent

Nordic trails guided us easily over Mill Creek and we set off towards Windy Pass. The skin track and our powder desires brought us higher up Mt. Catherine than needed for a Silver ascent and instead of fighting it, we flowed uphill, not wanting to see perfectly good powder get all wet and heavy before getting some turns on it. High whispy clouds kept the sun's strength at a minimum for much of the morning, preserving the snow for our afternoon descent. As we gained the summit the sun began to win the battle with the clouds and especially out to the East blue skies were in order.

Mt Catherine views: Southwest (L) to Northwest (R)

The turns off the summit were supreme - light fluffy powder. Whooping and hollering we made our way down and enjoyed a nice lunch under the trees... until they started sending bombs our way.

tuns off the summit

Dave ripping it up just below the summit

We basically followed our skin track out and glided back down to the nordic track for a quick climb up the backside of Hyak. I found my recently unwaxed skis perfectly fine without skins and motored up. Should probably wax those before skiing any concrete this spring / summer....

Final look back towards Windy Pass (center right) and Mt. Catherine (left)

 The last run of the day out the frontside of Hyak was amazing groomed courdury. Just ripping! Perfect timing... powder when it was light, and some grommers on the way out when it was getting heavy.