Touring the Muir Snowfield (Tahoma)
We’re so back!
After a long unplanned stop in the Northeast to build an entirely new van; I was finally approaching Seattle again. Unfortunately a historically low snowpack and historically high flooding meant we had almost resigned ourselves to spending the weekend climbin in Vantage - and then a friend mentioned there was enough snow on Tahoma for her AIARE 1 class. We checked the webcams (saw some snow from the parking lot), ensured the gate would be open, read the Avalanche forecast (Low to moderate, and we were traveling on low-angle terrain and comfortable identifying the warning signs of wet slides), and decided this was as good as we’d get.
We arrived at the Paradise parking lot around 10:00am to many other skiers and hikers and gorgeous clear skies. While the first opportunity for skinning presented itself only a few steps up the trail, we followed the crowds and kept our skis on our backs for a while longer, walking up the lightly snow-covered trail so we could more esily cross several further patches of bare pavement.
After a relatively short walk, we put on our skis and continued up the skyline trail.
We soon reached the steepest section of the trail, right below Panorama point. Between the Skiers and Hikers/Snowshoers it was quite crowded, but everyone respectfully stuck to the bootpack on the left side of the slope.
Then it was our turn to boot.
We reached Panorama Point (~6900 ft.) and took in the view,
From left to right: Lawetlat'la (St. Helens), Hood (pointy in the far distance), Pahto (Adams), Poop Barrels
And kept our skis on our back for a while longer, first for a relatively steep bootpack right above the point, and then for some easy walking on exposed rock.
From there it was straightforward skinning on firm snow up to ~8500 ft.
We made steady progress up the mountain, but as we ascended the wind picked up and the snow developed a thick icy crust. Lacking ski crampons, Anna waited at Moon rocks (~8700 ft), checking in with Henk and I over the radio as we scouted ahead. The wind and ice only increased, and being close to our turnaround time anyway, we called it soon after at around 9000 ft. I found a flat spot, did my best to kick into the ice enough to not slide away, and tried to transition as quickly as possible to get back out of the by now constant wind.
After a bit of chatter and scrape on the icy sections, we enjoyed a long descent on firm, wide-open slopes reminiscent of a groomed resort trail late in the day.
The vast open slopes reminded me of skiing in the Alps as a child, but with the addition of the volcanoes (Tahoma looming above and Lawetlat’la, Hood and Pahto in the distance) created a skiing ambiance like nothing I had experienced before.
After the snowfield we primarily followed our uptrack back down. We took a skier’s right around Panorama point, which allowed us to bypass the bootpacks but did force some fairly low-coverage skiing on steeper slopes. While we did have to take our skis off a few times to walk across exposed pavement, we managed to ski pretty much to the parking lot - not bad for such a low-snow year!
