Welcoming 2022 at Snow Peak Cabin, Colville National Forest

To welcome 2022, we continued our New Year's tradition by returning to the Colville National Forest to ski to Snow Peak Cabin for another multi-day stay, December 31, 2021-January 2, 2022. 
Once again I had haunted the recreation.gov website in late June in order to book a reservation in late December-early January. My efforts paid off! And just as in January 2021, stormy weather preceded our stay at the cabin, necessitating a cautious approach as we circled around Sherman Peak on our approach. However, there was a new concern: an Arctic air mass brought incredibly frigid temperatures to Washington state. As we began our drive to the Sherman Pass sno-park, elevation 5575, we watched the car's thermometer register increasingly lower temperatures. It was negative 9 degrees F. as we began our ski to the cabin - the coldest temperature I think I've ever gone skiing in! We basked in the bright sunshine and dry, fluffy snow under an electric blue sky. 

I wore my Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer down pants under my North Face Futurelight hard shell bibs. I also wore a long sleeved baselayer, a sweater, Dachstein boiled wool mittens with Goretex outer shell mitts, and a down jacket. Julbo glacier glasses, a hat, and a balaclava completed the outfit. It took about a mile of skinning before I removed the down jacket. I found that whenever I exposed my face, neck, chin, cheeks for too long my skin began to tingle alarmingly. Lots of lip balm also was oddly helpful on my lips. In fact throughout our time at Snow Peak Cabin on this trip I always wore my down pants as my base layer and could feel on my legs exactly where they are quilted and the insulation is thinner. I mostly skinned in this outfit, swapping out the down jacket for a hardshell jacket. Keeping in motion was key: any time I stopped for any length of time I needed a heavier layer on my torso. 

Fortunately with the route mostly climbing to the cabin, the exertion kept me warm enough as we mostly broke trail to the cabin. The trail again was only partially marked with blazes and fluorescent flagging tape. Knowing the area was very useful in route-finding. There are a few spots where we purposefully deviated from the summer trail in order to find a better ski line. 

Snow Peak Cabin was a welcome sight though since it had not been in use the day of our arrival, it was the ambient temperature when we arrived and so our first task was to light the wood-burning stove. Slowly the temperature indoors rose - I kept myself busy with unpacking and breaking a trail to the outhouse in order to stay warm. The stove worked well and soon enough the cabin became a cozy refuge. Sunset blazed pink, orange and apricot and tempted us outdoors. After dinner and some sparkling wine in cans to celebrate New Year's Eve, despite the temperature which we estimated to be about -17 F. (based on sporadic cell phone coverage), we ventured out to enjoy the night sky. My new iPhone took some remarkably good pictures of the stars - although it could not capture the Milky Way which was gloriously shining overhead.  

January 1st dawned cold and clear. We decided to explore further south towards Bald Mountain, hoping that the gentler north-facing slopes on its flank would have fewer trees and be favorable to skiing. We followed the Kettle Crest south from Snow Peak Cabin. Clearly the US Forest Service assumes that no one will push this far since there was no flagging. We also saw no traces of other people passing this way though we did see countless animal tracks including moose tracks! Given the extreme cold, about -2 degrees F. or colder throughout the day, we were eager to stay in motion. Although initially following the Kettle Crest trail was easy, we did have to navigate carefully and ended up thrashing through at least one dense thicket in order to find the sharp bend in the trail as it heads east to skirt around the east side of Bald Mountain. 

Ultimately we found that those north-facing slopes were heavily wooded and unfavorable for skiing. We pushed on, traversing high on Bald Mountain's east flank until we reached a drainage with steeper, open slopes. These slopes funneled into a steep gully. Although open enough for skiing clearly we had found avalanche terrain. We inched to a safe observation point. Underfoot there was also a very thick wind slab that crunched and groaned under us. Given our experience with wind slab and whoompfing in 2021 we were extremely reluctant to venture farther. We turned around and skied north and from this different perspective were better able to find stretches of the Kettle Crest trail that we had previously missed and bushwhacked around. Relaxing at the cabin felt luxurious after being out in the cold. 

All too soon our time at the cabin was over and on Sunday, January 2, 2022, we carefully made our way back to Sherman Pass. This Sunday turned out to be the warmest day of the trip with temperatures rising to perhaps 10 degrees F. Constant motion remained the key to staying warm enough and given the nature of the return trip we opted to keep our skins on although that sacrificed some opportunity in the final mile for gliding quickly downhill. Overall though I'd say that I preferred doing the return route with skins on over trying to transition back to skiing with a full overnight pack. 

Strangely, I sort of missed the cold once we had left. The snow was excellent and I never sweated! I look forward to returning again to this gorgeous place for future winter explorations- both north of Sherman Pass from the Sherman Pass sno-park as well as from the Deer Creek/Boulder sno-park.


Welcoming 2022 at Snow Peak Cabin

Resources

Strava

Comments

Post a Comment