Trip Stats
Trip Report
We ended up meeting in the Alpental parking lot at 4:30am and it only took us an hour to reach the saddle above Snow Lake. Trevor had camped at Snow Lake two days prior, and commented on how much slide activity the warm weather had generated over the last couple of days. There was evidence of a couple of large slides on Roosevelt as we made our way up the bottom part.
We were surprised how fast it heated up - the snow was slushy at 7am. We were a little nervous as we approached the final chute to the top snow field. There was about 12 inches of unconsolidated snow that formed small, slow moving slides whenever we ski cut it. But the layer underneath seemed really solid, so we decided to continue up to the top. Getting up the final chute required a boot pack and we had to slowly make our way up – keeping an eye on each other.
Once on the top (about 9am), we had excellent views of all the peaks – Baker, Glacier, Rainier, Overcoat, Big Snow, Daniels… We spied a tight, steep couloir to the north which looked really nice. There was also an open coloiur off the north west side of Roosevelt leading down to Wild Cat Lake which looked like a rice nice ski, although it would make for a long day.
Our descent was interesting. We would ski cut the slope, let the slow slides clear off the top 12 inches, and then descend on the cleared path. It worked really well… We made it back to the car at 11am, after taking a couple of long breaks on the way back.
