I had just accepted a new job, so I wanted to use some of my accrued days off at my old job before I left, which perfectly lined up with a clear, stable pow day in February. Rob had Mondays off, so we decided to go for the Snot Couloir on Snoqualmie Mountain, which required a short 60m rappel to access the goods.

I had never been up the phantom trees before, so I was excited to check them out, hearing that they were notoriously hard going. Pleasantly, the deep & cold blanket of powder that had landed overnight made travel laughably easy. We skinned up the whole way to the Snot, taking a large traverse west to check out the ridge when things opened up on the upper mountain.

We traversed under the clif band above the slide path, and went up an existing skin track to find the Snot, with a blazing orange rap anchor tied to a tree. Rob peered in and yelled back at me, “Oh yeah, this is it.”

A pair of skiers that had skied it before us came by to grab their gear before heading off to ski the Slot next. They claimed to have only used a single 70m and rappeled from a different, lower anchor further west along the ridge. They described their descent as, “maximum acceptable sketch,” so I was happy to have a full 60m to work with.

We geared up, and I tied both of my 30m sections of 6mm line together with a double fisherman’s knot. I had cut my 60m line into two 30m sections, so we would have to pass a knot on rappel - something I had never done before. First time for everything I guess.

I let Rob rap first, trusting him to ski cut the slope on rappel. The rope eventually went slack, and I heard an incredibly faint yell, so I took that as an all-clear and started to rig my rappel. Let me tell you, rappeling with skis on SUCKS. Once things got vertical and rocky, there was nothing for my skis to do but catch on every jagged edge and get scraped up. Lesson learned - take the time to put your skis on your pack for rappels. As a bonus, you look cooler anyways!

I scraped my way down, passed the knot by going in-direct with two prussiks, and kept scraping until I landed next to an amused Rob. He said he tested the snow and found it was stable. Looking down the couloir, I could barely tell it had been skied merely an hour before. There was so much low-density snow filling the rock-lined walls we were in for the best run of the winter.

Rob went first, sinking into the snow nearly to his belly button. He took some tight, slow turns before opening it up towards the lower couloir, and I followed suit. When we came out onto the apron below the couloir, we opened things up all the way, enjoying wide, blower, and untracked powder turns. I yelled, “Holy shit!” as I flew down the apron in view of a few parties skinning up the exit. I couldn’t believe how good the skiing was. It felt like flying.

Instead of heading up the exit basin, we skied as far as we could north, and looked to gain the ridge to Avalanche Mountain. As scary as the name sounds, the south west face of Avalanche is a treed, fairly mellow slope, and would be amazing on a stable powder day like today. We skinned up to gain the ridge, and only had to boot briefly to find ourselves on the summit. The weather cleared on our way, and led to some of the most jaw-dropping views of the north side of Snoqualmie, and we reveled in staring at our morning tracks as we went.

From the summit of Avalanche, we skied some surprise mid-winter corn down the now-sunny south-west face. We loved it. How often do you get deep mid-winter powder and corn in the same day? We skied straight down to Snow Lake, where we landed on the flat and transitioned for one last up and our favorite Alpental Luge track exit to get us back to the car.