Guides Day-Off: Ski Touring near Crystal Mountain, Washington

Work hard, play hard….Definitely the mantra at Moun­tain Mad­ness these days. So when co-work­er Mark Ryman and I had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to hook up with some friends for a fun-filled day of back­coun­try ski­ing this past Sat­ur­day, we took advan­tage of a break in the weath­er, and head­ed a few hours south to one of my favorite ski haunts: Crys­tal Mountain.

Crys­tal Moun­tain is the largest ski area in Wash­ing­ton State with over 3000 ft of ver­ti­cal, tons of lift access ​“slack­coun­try,” and arguably the best and steep­est expert ter­rain around. To top it off, its close prox­im­i­ty to Mt Rain­er makes it one of the most scenic ski areas I’ve ever been to in the west­ern Unit­ed States. With good access, numer­ous options for back­coun­try skiers, and con­sis­tent­ly good snow con­di­tions, the adja­cent peaks are per­fect for ski tour­ing day trips.

I’ve been ski­ing at Crys­tal for over twen­ty years. My first real expe­ri­ence with seri­ous avalanche haz­ard was there as well – at night, by head­lamp, with 40 pounds of explo­sives in my back­pack. I had tak­en a few years off from col­lege to ​“find myself” and got­ten hired onto the pro­fes­sion­al ski patrol for the sea­son. Sec­ond only to Alta Utah, Crys­tal uses (at least back then) the most amount of explo­sives in the coun­try to mit­i­gate avalanche haz­ard with­in and out­side ski area boundaries.

I remem­ber my first morn­ing of avalanche con­trol like it was yes­ter­day. That win­ter had its ups and downs per­son­al­ly. It was to become a super for­ma­tive year, how­ev­er, and it helped dic­tate much of my future that was becom­ing more and more char­ac­ter­ized by a life lived in the moun­tains. Like the Aus­tri­an leg­end Kurt Diem­berg­er says: ​“The lover of moun­tains must go to the moun­tains. Oth­er­wise he will cease to be a per­son, both to him­self and to others.”

I real­ly ​“found myself” that first morn­ing – break­ing trail through cor­nices and up the ​“Queen” behind the famed Rain­er guide Brent Oki­ta who (lat­er that spring) would go on to sur­vive an open bivouac high on Ever­est after his head­lamp froze. ​“I nev­er got cold,” he relat­ed after­wards. He sum­mit­ed solo at day break the next day.

Our team threw a lot of bombs that morn­ing and com­plete­ly cleared the huge bowl of Camp­bell Basin (cen­ter of first pho­to) – mas­sive avalanche debris run­ning down val­ley and hit­ting the base of chair 6. On the exit run off the ​“Throne,” with Brent and Julie spot­ting me, my ski tips augured into the cas­cade con­crete and I found myself stuck on steep ter­rain just below a huge frac­ture line of a large slab that failed but not released. Waist deep and stuck like a cork in a bot­tle of bad red wine, I strug­gled to free myself and not be the final trig­ger for the avalanche that was sure to bury me deep. I can still hear Brent scream­ing, ​“Get out of there! Get out of there!”

Fast for­ward 19 years….Mark and I arrived a bit soon­er than our friends, so we donned climb­ing skins, did an avalanche bea­con check, and start­ed the plea­sur­able ascent into Bul­lion Basin. Our ide­al plan was to check out north fac­ing slopes of Crown Point which involves a short climb to a pass, a steep descent down into Union Creek, and then a climb up to gain the cor­niced ridges of Crown Point prop­er. After about and hour of skin­ning up old log­ging roads and through some beau­ti­ful old-growth sil­ver fir, we arrived at a small lake and caught a good view of Peak 6479.

Old Growth Fir photo

Mark Ryman

Once we gained the pass we caught our first glimpse of Crown Point. This was Mark’s first time in this par­tic­u­lar area – need­less to say he was psy­ched with what we saw! Apart from the fact that no one had skied off our cho­sen peak the day, the first thing I noticed was a small slab avalanche that had pulled out nat­u­ral­ly from near the summit.

Crown Point

It looked like this from the top

Our descent into Union Creek was a nice long one, although the pre­vi­ous day’s sun had done a num­ber on any aspect that was steep and fac­ing east through west. After a quick snack, we broke trail through val­ley bot­tom for­est and start­ed to pick our way up toward our objec­tive. Not too long after we ran into my friends Pam and Zeno who had climbed up and over Crown Point and did some inves­ti­ga­tion into the snow­pack along the way. We all agreed that the observed small avalanche was an iso­lat­ed occur­rence, and if we changed our aspect a bit and watched our slope angles, we could ski some nice lines safe­ly. A bit more dig­ging and scruti­ny of load­ing pat­terns increased our con­fi­dence. The ski­ing looked like this!

Jeff ​“I have a PhD and ski like a pro” Ranish

After lunch, and typ­i­cal of a good pow­der day, we met up with the last of our friends and our 3 sep­a­rate groups had merged into one big one. Dwayne and Tere­sa brought their new one year-old Alaskan Husky. On her sec­ond day out back­coun­try ski­ing, Lucy was clear­ly not phased at all – youth­ful, super psy­ched, and ful­ly in her ele­ment – she is going to be a sol­id part­ner in the future.

Lucy ​“I’ll Ski you into the Ground” Dunaway

Susan tear­ing it up

After a cou­ple more runs Mark and I had to make our way back – Mark for kid-duty and me for, well, an ​“engage­ment.” Break­ing away from every­one was pret­ty tough, and I, in par­tic­u­lar, incurred a lot of flack for leav­ing ear­ly on such a good day: ​“Hot date lat­er!” Dwayne chid­ed me. ​“No such thing on a pow­der day!”

Writ­ten by Jere­my Allyn