Snow Peak, Colville National Forest: January 3-5, 2021

To celebrate New Year's, we opted to return to the Sherman Pass area in northeastern Washington state, about 20 miles outside of Republic via State Route 20, in the Colville National Forest. Sherman Pass is the highest mountain pass in the state that is open year-round. The snowplowing on that highway is exquisite! The Sherman Pass sno-park offers multiple options for snow sports-- no groomed tracks for Nordic skiing though, so a basic Washington State sno-park permit is all you need to park there.

I had luckily snagged a reservation at recreation.gov for Snow Peak Cabin many months ago for 2 nights: January 3 and 4, 2021. The cabin is maintained by the US Forest Service and was built in the 1990s through the joint efforts of the Snow Peak Shelter Alliance and the Colville National Forest. The cabin is tucked on a saddle between Snow Peak and Bald Mountain and open year-round for stays by reservation only. It's about 5 miles from Sherman Pass via the southbound Kettle Crest Trail. Reservations are hard to come by: even though this is a somewhat remote location (about 5 hours from Seattle) apparently the secret is out that there's a cozy cabin surrounded by powder turns! 
FYI: the Northwest Avalanche Center does not issue a forecast for this area.
Our plan was to ski in on the 3rd, tour every day, then pack up after our tour on the 5th and ski out. I had mapped out routes in advance ranging from more ambitious - approaching Bald Mountain -- to less ambitious -- staying near and low on Snow Peak. Yet without good beta on the area and no professional avalanche forecast available we were ultimately going to have to assess conditions onsite before deciding where to go.
A storm blew through on January 2, the day before we started our trip. So... the morning started with digging through a berm on State Route 20 to clear a path to drive into the sno-park. Next we hiked along the highway carrying our skis about .25 miles to access the trailhead. Although the southbound Kettle Crest trailhead does start in the sno-park, it descends into a ravine and then ascends back to SR 20, so you might as well skip that section and walk east along SR 20 if you're heading south.
As we skinned in everything was buried in fresh snow. We broke trail for most of the journey and had to conduct careful route-finding, especially once we passed the junction of the Sherman Peak Loop trail (which often does not appear on digital mapping services like Gaia or Caltopo, I noticed!) and the Kettle Crest Trail, about a mile in. The Kettle Crest Trail was intermittently blazed and flagged with plastic tape, which eventually disappeared. There were wooden signs, sometimes with tall orange poles for greater visibility, marking junctions but they were hard to find if you didn't already know that they were there. One in fact had broken off its post and fallen to the ground and was partly buried in the snow. 


The winter route to Snow Peak Cabin climbs about 1500 feet: an initial climb leads you to contour around the north side of Sherman Peak, then after some undulating, it traverses along the southwest side of Snow Peak before you drop onto the saddle. The cabin is visible from the trail about 1.5 miles out on a clear day. We kept skins on for the entire journey southbound, which worked well. 

With perhaps a mile left to go before we reached the cabin, we encountered a pair of snowshoers who had gotten lost in the previous day's storm. They had a dramatic tale to tell: after getting disoriented in the whiteout, they had bivouacked overnight in the cabin (which is left unlocked and is stocked with fuel and firewood). Apparently one of them had gotten enough of a phone signal to use Google Maps to locate the cabin and they stumbled into it after dark in the blizzard! Definitely a lifesaver for them.

We eagerly shed our heavy overnight packs at the cabin and went out to find some easy powder turns, to take advantage of the good weather window. Based on prior research we skinned up a nearby south-facing slope of Snow Peak. Powder bonanza! Enjoyable turns before we returned to the cabin to settle in for the night. 

Early in the morning of January 4 the predicted blizzard hit and the winds picked up. The snow fell relentlessly throughout the day. At least a foot of snow accumulated- so much snow that to use the outhouse we had to put on our skis and skin there-- since otherwise you'd sink hip-deep. We decided to reconnoiter despite the blizzard and skied back northerly along the Kettle Crest trail, observing the pattern of wind scouring and deposition. Clearly the wind was funneling snow between Bald Mountain and Snow Peak. We picked our way up a low-angle wind-scoured slope out of caution and took a bumpy ride down. My face was stinging from the constant pelting of snow and the howling wind. We retreated back to the cabin for lunch before venturing out again for a second tour in another low-angle spot near our previous day's tour.  

By 2 am or so the blizzard had ceased and I went outside to find a surprisingly clear night. The new snow sparkled silver in the moonlight around the cabin and the Milky Way and stars were neon-bright. January 5 dawned clear and cold. We got an early start to look for turns on the southwest side of Snow Peak, focusing on a ridgeline just south of the actual peak. We proceeded tentatively, aiming for lower angle slopes, measuring slope angles, and observing the snowpack as we skinned upwards. We were optimistic that we could ascend nearly to the top of this ridgeline, based on mapping. Wind slabs clearly had formed on these slopes and they felt hollow and appeared dense when probed. We perhaps were overconfident since we had skied similar nearby slopes on January 3 that had also been wind-loaded by the January 2nd storm. Just below a terrain feature that bulged outwards - like a crease folding the ridgeline - I saw shooting cracks suddenly appear and shoot uphill towards Jim for at least 6 feet. I shouted to warn him and simultaneously while I was shouting, a deep WHOOMPH boomed out from above us. We knew that up there the slope angles increased to 30+ degrees but we had attempted to stay out from underneath the steepest slopes. The "whoomph" sounded like a cannon going off and we immediately transitioned as fast as possible and skied out to an island of safety away from the slope. My heart was pounding! There was no one around and we had not seen anyone since that pair of snowshoers on January 3, so we were reliant on ourselves for our own safety.

After debriefing the incident we cleaned up the cabin, packed up and skinned out with no small amount of trepidation on my part. We decided that we would move as fast as we could while traversing below the wind-loaded slopes on Snow Peak, spaced apart. The previous day's blizzard had obliterated our previous skin tracks so we were slowed down by the need to navigate as we headed northbound on the Kettle Crest Trail. We also had to break trail. As we reached the north side of Sherman Peak there were occasional open slopes where we also maintained our protocol of crossing only one at a time. I was quite relieved when we returned to a zone where we anticipated less overhead hazard. We had to keep skins on for at least the first 3 miles of the journey out. Only once we were really on the north side of Sherman Peak could we transition and ski out. We were able to cut some of the switchbacks in the final mile of the Kettle Crest Trail (between the junction with the Sherman Peak Loop trail and where it intersects with SR 20).

And... after 3 days of solitude we did encounter a pair of US Forest Service employees skinning to the cabin to do some maintenance when we were about 1.5 miles or so from the trailhead. They were flagging the trail with fresh tape. We shared our experience with the super-sensitive wind slab and other observations. They too were taking precautions about wind-loaded surfaces and storm slab and were also expressing concern about travel to the cabin. Finally we encountered one lone telemark skier, a local who was opting out of venturing towards Snow Peak and was opting to ski part of the loop around Sherman Peak instead. He shared some local knowledge about routes in the area and was surprised to see Seattle-area folks visiting!

The final stage of the adventure was digging out the car from underneath 2 storms' worth of snow. Fortunately it was all light, dry powder! 

In hindsight I would very much enjoy returning to this area, despite our close call with an unstable slope. Light, dry snow, sunshine, the various options for ski tours, and of course the option to stay indoors in a warm cabin remain very appealing!

Resources

 Snow Peak Cabin

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