Trip Stats
Trip Report
Dale had brought his two sleds up to Hyak, so we decided to head out to Silver Peak for the day. Having never driven a sled, I opted to use the tow rope and 20 minutes later we were at the base of Silver Peak. We stowed the sleds, threw on our skins and began the ascent. There were a ton of snowmobile tracks in the Silver Peak bowls, and on our way up we were passed by a group of three sledders coming down the mountain. We reached the ridge and began a boot pack traverse up the ridge. We eventually decided to drop onto the backside of Silver and try and wrap our way around to the summit, instead of booting along the ridge. I saw a steep opening in the rocks that looked like it went up, so I began laying a traverse up the slope. Tim and Dale continued farther along. My route stopped abruptly and I had to boot up another couple hundred feet to get to the top. Tim and Dale were able to wrap around and skin to within 25 feet of the summit.
After a nice break, we donned the skis and made our descent down to Annette Lake. The sun was soft and slushy, but nice. As we entered the forest, the aspect steepened as we followed a gully. We ended up in very tight and steep trees and had to proceed slowly and carefully. Once at the bottom, we skied across the lake and ate lunch in the shade. The top half of our descent was great, but the lower half was less than ideal. We skinned up a long slope back to the ridge and skied down Silver Peak bowl back to the sldes. Next time around, I don't think I will bother going to the summit and instead ski down to Annette Lake from the ridge.
