[pct-l] Skiing from Snoqualmie Pass SB to Whites Pass

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good morning, Atomic,

As a general rule, anyone with the skill and experience necessary to make
such a trip wouldn’t have to ask the question.

There is snow and there is snowpack.
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=264464  The Cascades in autumn
and early winter will have mostly fluffy snow.  That’s the stuff that must
be walked through rather than slid over; particularly on flat ground or
uphill.  In late spring and early summer there will be mostly hard snowpack
like the stuff most thru-hikers walk over in their sneakers during the
typical hiking season.  Trying to use skis on snowpack hills can be a real
pain because of the slickness and the minimal ability to “edge” into the
hard stuff.

Late winter and early spring can have both.  The older accumulation will
have coalesced into fairly hard snowpack, but late snowfall can easily
stack several feet – or more – of loose stuff on top of it.  That makes any
flat or uphill difficult, plus those conditions often create significant
avalanche risk.

Also in that season, there is a strong likelihood of experiencing a warm
front bringing lots of rain.  Rain will soften whatever snow or snowpack
that may be on the ground making it into a foot or so of slush and slop.

With difficult travel, difficult route-finding, and still-short days it’s
likely a person would be lucky to book more than 5 miles per day regardless
of how many miles the cross-country skiers claim to make in their nice
groomed two-tracks on easy ground.

If you live anywhere around the Cascades it would be a good idea to try
some day-hikes or over-nighters under those conditions before setting out
for 100 miles of it.

Beginning at http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=294272 there are
about a half-dozen photos of January snow on Mt Hood.  There were about 200
inches on the ground at that time, and not much of it melted off by
mid-March.

Steel-Eye

-Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye

http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09/