Greg skinning along the ridge, descending from Cowboy Mountain
Cowboy Mountain (5,853 ft)
Eric and Greg
November 26, 2017
A string of warm, rainy days had caused most of the ski resorts in the cascades to temporarily close, and Sunday was supposed to be more of the same weather. But Greg and I wanted to get in our first ski of the season, so we drove up to Steven’s Pass to ski some of thinly-covered slopes. We skinned up to the top of the seventh heaven lift, then took off the skis to climb steeply up to a sharp ridge above. At the ridge we put the skis back on and carefully traversed to the summit of Cowboy Mountain.
From here we decided to be adventurous and ski down the backside, towards the Tunnel Creek drainage. It was fun to get in my first turns of the season! Before getting too low we traversed left through the trees, and climbed back up to the ridge that was the ski resort boundary.
By this time it started snowing really hard and got pretty windy. We eventually skied back down to a notch along the PCT. The visibility was pretty bad, and Greg’s skins quit sticking, so we abandoned our plan to hit another mountain and instead skied back to the car. It was a fun outing for our first ski of the season.
© 2017, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.
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