On the summit ridge
Mount Pilchuck (5,340ft)
Eric and Aaron
March 26, 2017
We hit the trailhead at 7:30am on a rainy sunday morning, and ended up walking in our ski boots for a few miles on the closed gravel road until we reached snow. We put our skis on, but unfortunately the snow was not continuous, so we had to keep transitioning back and forth from skis to boots. Eventually we were able to skin up the last mile to the trailhead, where the snow was several feet deep.
We followed some posthole tracks that soon disappeared, then switchbacked up the mountain. The rain turned to snow, but it let up enough to get a great view out toward Puget Sound. Our progress was a bit slower than expected, and we got up to the edge of treeline on a corniced ridge around 1:30pm. Above us the snow slopes looked a bit risky under the forecast avy conditions, so we called that our highpoint and turned around.
Skiing back down was awesome, but didn’t last long enough and we were soon back to walking down the gravel road to the car.
© 2017, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.
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