Trip Stats
Trip Report
Dale, Tim and I decided to head into Gold Creek Valley and skin up to Rocky Ridge. Following the road from the Gold Creek Parking area, we found a skin trail and started following it up through the woods. We had planned to cut looker’s right of chutes and into the area that had been selectively forested for timber, but since the track was already laid, we decided to stick to it. It meandered up through the thick forest and after a couple of hours, we found ourselves at the top of Rocky Ridge. We continued to the East side and reached a bluff, where we could see Mount Rainier to the South, Mount Margaret to the East and Lake Lillian to the North. The wind was blowing fairly hard, causing us to head over to the Gold Creek side of the ridge to take our lunch in the sun and out of the wind.
After a short break, it was time to head down. The snow was decent, with ten inches of powder sitting on a sturdy crust. We skied down into the trees and then headed into a clear-cut area. The gradient became very steep and we were able to get some nice turns in the slushy snow. Tim and I ventured into a steep ravine skier’s left and had some nice turns in the shade. Eventually we realized we would not be able to ski down any farther and we had to side-steep back up the side. The skiing form then on was pretty bad, as we picked our way through a dense forest with crusty and hard snow under foot.
