“Just a couple of b-boys bootin”

It was a sunny & warm March day in snoqualmie, and we were finally able to drag coach Ben away from his favorite activity of scrubbing moss in Index to join Ben and I to get after the slot couloir on Snoqualmie Mountain.

The phantom was a sloppy mess, so we threw our skis on our packs in the parking lot and settled in for a long day of booting. It was good to be back skiing with both Bens. The last time we had all skied together was when we skied the Fuhrer Finger on Rainier last May. Somehow when the three of us get together, all we seem to do is boot.

We cracked jokes and chatted our way up through the trees onto the upper slopes, where we peered into the snot couloir and shared some words with the party getting ready to rappel into it. Booting the rest of the way up to the entrance for the slot, we met the party that graciously put in the boot pack for us. They asked us to save them some snow in the slot, but we’d soon find out there wasn’t much to save for them.

I took the first few 40° icy turns down into the slot, making quick jump turns while trying (and failing) to find some sort of wind-blown snow to make the going easier. As a kind of silver lining, the snow was at least continuous from the top, requiring no down-climbing or spicy entrance shenanigans.

As we decended, the snow improved into a chalky wind-buff in spots, which allowed us to unpucker a bit and enjoy the skiing. We encountered two climbers making their way up the couloir, and the juxtaposition made me admittedly feel pretty cool.

We made our way out of the rock-lined walls of the slot, out the bottom, and enjoyed some chunky avalanche debris skiing over to our sunny lunch spot. We then spent the rest of the afternoon booting the ridge over to Avalanche Mountain, enjoying good views of our line and unexpectedly pleasant (and warm) weather. We sat on the summit for a while, where coach Ben waxed poetic about cleaning moss off wet rocks in the dark.

We skied perfect corn on the south west face of Avalanche Mountain and made our way down to Snow Lake, where we met the well trodden skin track back to the divide. The large March 1st avalanche on the south slopes of Chair Peak that reached Source Lake made for chunky skiing before the Source Lake luge track took us comfortably back to the parking lot. Another excellent day at Snoqualmie Pass, and the weather made me excited for more spring tours to come.