June 25, 2012 - Silver Peak

Plans shifted back and forth on a bid to ski Silver. The season for easy access and good skiing is short on Silver - it's an easy approach (can't get easier) once the road is open to Windy Pass, but the snow melts out and reveals base ripping rocks only a few weeks after the road is open. With sketchy weather our plans kept changing. We finally opted for a Tuesday night bivy ahead of a Wednesday - Thursday weather window.... not sure how that made sense, but it seemed to.

I raced home early from work, grabbed the ride and picked up Zahlen and Pat in downtown, where we commenced the crux of the trip: navigating downtown Seattle traffic at rush hour. We managed to sit around on Western for a number of light cycles before bailing to Alaska, which despite the construction provided easy access to SoDo, burritos, Beacon Hill and Skye. The car being full, we headed up to the pass, and made our way to the end of the road.

Views improved as we climbed, with breaking clouds providing some good views, and a hope for perhaps a bit of a sunset to watch from the ridge.

Snoqualmie Pass clouds

 The clouds decided to gather strongly at the summit instead of breaking, however, and as we climbed, visibility dropped and, despite the wager of burrito bites, Rainier was not visible from the ridge.

Pat and old tracks

We skinned up to the ridge via some soft snow and dropped packs. Skye and I dropped over to the SW side of the ridge to scramble up to the summit while the rest lapped up the slope below camp. The rocky trail and scramble proved difficult, because we actually didn't drop packs... for some reason... perhaps hoping for a camp spot big enough for 4.... we got to the top, enjoyed some "views" had a quick snack and headed down. The downhill we stayed on the trail proper, which made the traveling much better in the AT boots.

Skye on summit

We then got one lap under out belts before setting up camp to a light pattering of rain. During the night I kept checking for stars, and thankful each time that they weren't out there to pull me out of the bivy to take pictures. The sun rose early revealing beautiful light on Rainier. The morning dew was still strongly adhered to my front element, however, and all shots of Rainier came out just like I felt that morning... a little wet. The sun finally hit our slopes, however, warming and drying quickly, and softening up the snow slowly.

sunrise, hours after daybreak

Filtered light and remnants of moisture on my lens causing some "rainbows"

With thoughts of getting to work not THAT late, we finally pushed off to ski down, before the skiing was all that great. Upper slopes were nice, but in the shade lower down it quickly got icy. The top few turns were well worth it, however, and the rest of the day at the office went by easily with the satisfaction of morning of skiing.

Pat hucking the ridge