Ingalls South Peak Ski Tour

Originally this weekend had been penciled in to bag Glacier Peak with Lia and some of her fellow grad students. A combination of washed out accessed roads, weather, and other commitments led me to be standing outside my apartment at 5:45am Sunday morning waiting for Robert (whom I hadn’t met) to pick me up. We picked up Kyle and Heather (also strangers) but not Lia. It felt kind of like solo travelling in New Zealand again – go meet some random people and do something fun. Fortunately Lia makes friends with great people and we got along splendidly.

After a quick stop for corndogs at Snoqualmie Pass we hit the trail. Lia and I had climbed Ingalls last fall, but this time things were different as there was snow on the ground as we headed to Long’s Pass After a quick break for food and some artistic shots Robert and I jumped over the lip and skied down a nice bowl towards Ingalls Creek. His run was much more graceful than mine

<rant>This is where I want to have a snazzy embedded video clip but Picasa uploaded videos don't seem to expose this functionality even though they are pretty much Google Videos, which do. But since the intertubes are being flakey at ye olde apartment, I'm not re-uploading the video. So if you want to watch it, follow this link.</rant>

After a fair bit of traversing we finally found Headlight Creek and headed up the slope towards Ingalls
At Ingalls Lake we debated heading off to ski the far valley wall – seems like lots of other people had the same idea But decided to head for the Dogtooth so we could climb South Peak We ditched the skis and made short work of the climb to the top Where we could see the clouds roiling over Mt. Rainier in the distance We headed down and then traversed to the North Fork Teanaway River basin for an amazing ski out Or at least for Robert who’s a great (tele) skier and for Kyle and I who are passable, but have AT gear. Heather was more interested in bagging the peak (“goal oriented”) and getting back to the car in one piece (“I don’t get the thrill you guys get from skiing”). Which we all did at 8:30pm. Last car in the parking lot, but all smiles after a great day! Check out all the photos from the trip here.