Spring it on

Since my last post, we spent several weeks doing the usual early spring thing: Laps on the steeper in-bounds terrain at Alpental interrupted by frequent hanging out in the parking lot sessions.

With all the lifts in the state closed, it's time to start touring. Based on glowing trip reports from the week prior, I headed Saturday to Colchuck Glacier, which sits between Dragontail and Colchuck peaks. This is part of the Stuart range, southwest of Leavenworth. The trip is actually a lot like Interglacier: The trail is in difficult condition by the time the road melts out, and the skin up the glacier feels never-ending, but then you ski down and forget about all that.

A combination of early-season legs and tough trail conditions made this a very long day: 14 hours door-to-door. The drive is about 2 hours, but the slogging below the lake seen in the photo and video where what took the most time. There was tons of rotten snow that you'd break through up to your thighs, so you'd switch to skis/skins only to find a long patch of dry trail.

However, this is a truly spectacular area and is well worth the effort.

Not ready to ski only once a week, I headed up to Alpental (closed) for a quick lap. There's still a ton of snow, but it's not consolidate enough away from the groomed trails to be much to ski. Felt like a foot or two of death mush. Thankfully, they'd run a groomer about halfway down the mountain almost to the parking lot, so I follow that trail all the way down.

Feels great to be skinning again.