Lawetlat'la: Worm Flows Route: November 28, 2020

November 29, 2020

Lawetlat'la: Worm Flows Route: November 28, 2020

Goal: get some turns, maybe the summit depending on conditions

Marble Mountain Sno-Park

The road to the sno-park was clear of snow, some wet/icy patches.

The sno-park parking lot and the overflow lot both had maybe 10 inches of heavy, wet, slushy snow crisscrossed with tire tracks. In the morning (around 7:15am) when we arrived it was somewhat firm, and when we departed around 3pm it was wet, soft and melting to slush in the 40 degree temperature. Having a higher clearance vehicle with winter tires was very helpful as the sno-park is not being plowed yet. The outhouse was open; we didn't check on the status of the main building in the main parking lot.

The climber register at Marble Mountain sno-park is easy to locate and has plenty of pages for climbers to sign in/out, but although it has multiple writing utensils few of them function. Bring your own & better yet, one to donate to the collection! The climbing permits were also easy to locate and there seemed to be plenty of those available. However, water has seeped into the box holding the permits and they were all soaked and turning to mush. Maybe storing them in a plastic bag inside that box would help?

Marble Mountain Nordic Trail System

The Swift Creek trail #244 has large bare patches of dirt and very thin patchy snow strewn with pine needles for the first .3 miles from the parking lot. We started off by carrying our ski gear and hiking in our ski boots.

Where we transitioned to skinning

At about .6 miles in, near a sharp bend by a viewpoint overlooking a rocky valley, the snow was more consistently covering the trail and we were able to transition from hiking and carrying our skis to traveling on our skis. This was a well-timed transition: as we skied onwards, we didn't need to remove our skis again due to lack of snow.

Chocolate Falls / wooden posts section (3700-4800' elevation approx.)

Once we reached Chocolate Falls we began following the wooden posts as well as keeping an eye on the well-beaten trail. Snow was soft and mushy, high water-content. At 3800' feet elevation or so we saw a series of large roller balls in the snow on the steep sides of the gully above Chocolate Falls, indicating that probably the sun's impact on the snow had caused it to soften and slide down.

Above 4800': ski / boot crampons were a MUST

Once the wooden posts ended and we were at 4800' or so, we climbed upwards along the beaten path. The snow gradually became firmer and icier. A rain-crust became increasingly pervasive and thick. Eventually there were sections (that you could dodge) with large glassy ice patches, where rain/water had funneled and frozen.

It became quickly evident that we needed ski crampons to continue. (We saw a skier turn around due to a lack of ski crampons.)

Ice, Ice Baby

Finally, around 5500' or so, the snow became entirely coated with the rain-crust which appeared thicker here, sometimes smooth, but frequently it had a pebble-like texture. We were no longer punching through this crust much if at all on skis. The path beaten in by the foot traffic from those people who had passed by wearing boots had iced up somewhat. It did seem like anyone wearing boots, rather than skis or snowshoes, had still been breaking through the rain crust at this elevation.

We climbed several hundred more feet before giving up on ski crampons due to the slippery omnipresent ice. It seemed thicker here. The ice sometimes would shatter like a sheet of glass into large shards underfoot. Since zigzagging uphill doesn't work as well for ski crampons, we had to beeline straight uphill, which was punishing!

Once the ski crampons weren't gripping as well as we had hoped, it was decision time. How much farther would we climb?

Booting up to see if it got less icy... Nope!

We stashed our skis and poles and switched to boot crampons and ice axes to see if conditions changed higher up. Our goal was skiing, not attaining the summit. So we were eager to know if the snow softened up above us. We hiked up to 7100' elevation or so, painfully kicking hard into the ice to break trail as the footsteps of those who had come this way recently before us wandered around and were irregular. As the smaller, lighter person (130 lbs + probably 20 lb pack) I had trouble breaking the crust and so I followed my larger, heavier partner uphill. The snow remained buried under the hard, thick ice crust, even at 7100'. Walking downhill I again had to work hard to kick steps into the snow- that crust really didn't want to break under my weight!

Thanksgiving's Over But There Are Still Mashed Potatoes!

Since skiing down ice isn't that fun, we opted to hike back to our skis and ski out from there. The first couple hundred feet were ice, but then given that the sun had had time to warm the snow, we encountered mushy "mashed potatoes" springtime-like snow for the rest of the journey home. The waterlogged heavy snow was skiable although it was hard work to ski down!

We initially veered west of our ascent route, skiing through another parallel lava flow, before working our way back east to regain our ascent route.

We picked our way back through the trees where the wooden posts mark the route, regained the sno-park trail system, and were able to ski out until about the final .2 mile or so of the trail, being careful to stay on the snow as the coverage thinned approaching the parking lot.