Last post I said we were putting the skis away and bringing the hiking shoes back out, I should have stuck with that plan. I finished finals and was ready to start exploring deeper into Alaska. Everyone I talked to was ready to ski some fun backcountry lines, especially since rumor had it that Hatcher pass got 23inch in 23 hours at the beginning of the week. I spent a long time looking into where to go but honestly I had no idea. With the Hatcher pass avalanche center only putting out advisories once a week and not being able to talk or see anything about resent ski descents I was throwing my cheese into the wind! Sean, Ced, Miranda, and I found are selves piled into the Forerunner at 7 am again, but headed towards Hatcher Pass instead of Turnagain Pass. Before we could get out of town though we were joined by Bella and Silken, we started a caravan and off to the pass we went.
We got to the independent mine parking lot around 8:30 and started to gear up. Still having no idea where to go I was planning on looking around at snow pack along the way and make a game time decision where to go. It also doesn't help that it's dark till 10 am right now, so we headed off towards the valley in between Marmot and Microdot. We were really surprised with how much snow was up there but we were even more surprised with how massive the the rock piles were. |
We thought that up high on Mircodot there would be some fun gullies with an ok amount of snow, so we thought. We spent an hour trying to pick our way up the rocky ridge. Tired, cold, over the fact that there was no snow, and it was going to be a scary descent we decided to turn around. As everyone was packing up just for shits and giggles I dug a quick pit. I saw that there was depth hoar, crust, some solid consistent snow, then top with some nice surface hoar. Not the best layers to have but we were on mellow 30 degree slop and just going to pick our way down. People were still getting ready so I set up some column tests. With no surprise both CT test failed on the depth hoar layer after one tap from the elbow with a quality 3 sheer (CT11 Q3). Everyone was ready to go so we VERY VERY VERY SLOWLY picked are way back down the skin track, hitting a rock every turn. We got back to the trail head around noon and watched the sunset as we drove back to anchorage.