Amphitheater Mountain

Amphitheater Mountain (8,358 ft)

Probable First Ski Descent

Nov 6-7, 2021

40 miles

Snow coverage looked good in the Cascades and I was excited to do my first ski tour since spring. I was interested in scouting out conditions in the Pasayten for a winter trip, and was particularly interested in determining the blowdown situation along Andrews Creek. I decided to try to ski up Andrews Creek and tag Amphitheater Mountain. I’d already climbed Amphitheater in June 2018 as a big 40 mile day trip along with Cathedral, but returning to ski it sounded fun. Interestingly I couldn’t find reports of people skiing it before.

The weather didn’t look great, but this area looked to be cold enough that all precipitation would be snow, and most of the route was below treeline so not very weather dependent. The route up Amphitheater avoids avy terrain so would be safe to ski solo. I was optimistic that, based on NOHRSC, snowline might start exactly at the trailhead.

Friday night I drove to the Andrews Creek trailhead, which was completely snow free. I slept in the car and got moving by 3:30am Saturday morning. I carried skis and boots on my back and hiked in regular hiking boots. Surprisingly the trail had very few blowdowns, despite all the snags along the way from the 2003 Fawn Peak fire. It must get logged out pretty frequently. There were plenty of bushes encroaching on the trail, but it wasn’t too bad.

I made it about 7 miles in before the snow finally got deep enough to justify putting the skis on. I hung my hiking boots in a tree and put a branch over the trail to stop me on the way back in case I forgot where the boots were. It seemed unlikely there would be other people on the trail that weekend that would care about the branch.

It felt great to get the extra weight off my back and start skinning. There were occasional rocks to avoid, but soon the snow got deep enough that I stopped worrying about scraping. I only encountered a few tricky blowdowns all the way to Andrews Pass, so overall the trail was in great shape. It had been snowing off and on all morning, and unfortunately all the surrounding summits were socked in clouds. I hoped it might clear for me to summit Amphitheater, but the peak would be easy enough to do in marginal weather anyway.

I glided down the north side of Andrews Pass to Spanish Creek, then continued for another mile to a small forest service cabin. The cabin was in an island of trees that hadn’t burned, and I decided to drop my overnight gear there. Much higher and I would be exposed to wind, and any lower I’d be in the dangerous burn zone, but the cabin location was perfect. Too bad it was locked.

With a lighter pack I continued east on the boundary trail and soon reached the base of Amphitheater Mountain. Amazingly a patch of blue sky moved overhead and I briefly had great views of Remmel to the south and Bald to the west. I noticed on peakbagger there was a south, north, and west summit of Amphitheater that were still red dots for me, so I decided to do a loop to hit them all.

I zig-zagged up the west face of the south peak as the weather deteriorated, and by the time I reached the south summit I was caught in a windy whiteout. I couldn’t bail without tagging the main summit, though, so I continued skinning north. I rounded the left side of the summit block and managed to ski to within about 5ft below the summit. I ditched skis there and made a somewhat tricky scramble to the summit in ski boots by 4:30pm. The weather was still nasty, and I dug around for the summit register, but couldn’t find it.

I quickly scrambled back down to my skis, then took the skins off and strapped them on. At first it looked too rocky to ski through the boulders and cliff bands, but I managed to find a way. I had to make tight turns, but managed to not scrape any rocks and not need to take my skis off. I still had a bit of daylight left, so at the col I put skins back on and skinned over to the north summit. Amazingly the snow squall let up just as I reached the summit, and I was treated to an awesome sunset view over Upper Cathedral Lake.

I stayed for a few minutes admiring the view, and then skied back down to the col. I considered tagging the west peak, but by then another snow squall was coming in and it appeared the peak would require me being above treeline in the dark and whiteout. If it was the main summit I would have done it, but I didn’t think another sub summit was quite worth it. Plus it looked rocky enough to not be skiable.

So I instead skied fun powder back down to the basin to the southwest. I eventually met my up tracks, then put the skins back on and skinned out. I needed the headlamp soon after, and made it to the cabin a bit after sunset. I pitched my tent near the cabin, cooked up some cous cous, and went to bed around 8pm.

I had originally thought about tagging Bald Mountain as a bonus peak for sunrise the next morning, but I also needed to make it out to Cashmere before 9pm so I could pick up my snowmobile and move it back to Seattle for the winter. I calculated that I really needed to be skiing out by 3:30am to make things work, so Bald Mountain would have to wait for another trip. I set my alarm for 3am, which was coincidentally about the time when the daylight savings time change was supposed to happen. I wasn’t sure if my phone would take that into account without service, so I would either get 7 hours or 8 hours of sleep that night.

It turned out my phone let me have the full 8 hours of sleep. I was really cold when I got up, and my thermometer measured 7F outside. Weather.gov had predicted a low in the mid teens, so this was much colder than I’d expected. It was perfectly clear out, which probably helped it get cold. Luckily I’d bought some really nice BD guide trigger finger mittens that allowed me to keep my fingers warm while taking down camp and packing. I soon started skiing, and navigation was easy following my tracks.

I soon made it up to Andrews Pass, and on the other side the clear skies got replaced by clouds and snow squalls again. I made quick progress skinning down the trail, and managed to find my hiking boots still hanging in the tree. The extra few inches of snow meant I could ski out a little farther this time before needing to switch to boots.

The rest of the hike out went smooth, and I reached the car around 1pm. I didn’t see any evidence of other hikers all weekend, and made it down to Cashmere in time to move my snowmobile back to Seattle.

 

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