Saved by the G-Skin

Last season, I started to tour deeper into the East Central Zone of the Cascades. A few of my tours ended with extended snowmobile road segments. The most notable was the Slammin’ Salmon Traverse, which required 5 miles of slightly downhill road skinning to end the day. The grade was not steep enough to skate or glide downhill and there were intermittent uphills. As we skinned slowly downhill, I wondered if there was a better way.

As I geared up for another ski season, I started to research techniques for skinning or skating flat terrain. My background in nordic skiing made me aware that nordic skis glided much better on flat terrain. I found Black Diamond Kicker Skins, but they seemed sub optimal with a large metal surface to create drag at the interface of the snow. But deep in an old school forum thread, I found the mention of a super narrow 2/3 length skin. This seemed preferable because snow would not build up on the front and I could glide on the edges if I balanced on edge.

I bought some 50cm wide mohair strips of skin, cut them in half, folded them over some front skin clips, and created my new tool: the G-Skin (short for “Glide Skin”). Even before I ever tested them on snow, I started thinking about applications of the G-Skin. One area that traditionally had far too long of a flat road approach for backcountry skiers without a snowmobile was the Teanaway. Could the G-Skin make a Teanaway approach more reasonable?

Seeing a favorable forecast for the East Central Zone, Logan and I decided to take out the G-Skin for a test drive to Earl Peak in the Teanaway. I had two pairs, so we each put on the hilariously tiny skins at the 29 Pine Sno-Park and began the long trek up the road.

There were a few inches of light fresh snow on top of the previously groomed snowmobile road. The fresh snow caused occasional slippage with such little skin surface, but mostly we glided well. We managed about 17 minute miles up a gradual uphill, a slight bit faster than we could have gone with traditional skins. But we knew the real potential was for the gradual downhill.

After a North Cascadian adventure a few days prior on Sahale, it was a completely different vibe out here on the Eastside. We skinned through Ponderosa Pines, approaching up Standup Creek. The 3+ miles to the trailhead, gaining about 600 ft, took around 55 minutes with the G-Skin – not a huge improvement over normal skins, but we were breaking trail. Once at the actual trailhead, we switched to normal, full coverage skins.

We knew that the low elevations would be interesting in the Teanaway, an area that receives less snow than others in the Cascades. However, we hoped that the cold easterly air combined with well maintained trails would allow us to get to the alpine. While there was certainly enough snow for skinning on the Standup Creek Trail, the snow was an awful recipe: about 4 inches of powder on top of a breakable crust, with very weak sugary snow beneath. The valleys here stay so cold that the snowpack does not consolidate at this time of year and instead facets, creating difficult trail breaking.

The other issue with the low elevations in the Teanaway is the creek crossings. There was a shocking amount of water coming out of the frozen mountains. The lower Teanaway never saw glaciers during the last Ice Age, so the valleys are steep canyons. As a result, the trails cross the rivers many times. The river crossings were sometimes tricky and we got our feet wet once.

At the steeper south face around 4500 ft, the snowpack was just enough to skin, but definitely not ski down. Our skins started to glop in the warm morning sun. Progress was slow. We definitely did not want to return down Standup Creek. The only thing keeping our mood up was the beautiful fog layer below us. After such a pleasant and BS-free romp up Sahale, Earl was beating us down.

Travel got much easier above 5k. We still needed a pick-me-up so we transitioned at around 6200 ft for a short SW facing run. The snow was decent dust on crust. After a short run, we felt better and decided to push up the south face towards the summit of Earl.

Taking advantage of a thin but strong snowpack, we skinned directly up the south face, exploring the different gullies and aspects. As we got higher, the snow and views kept getting better.

A cold wind greeted us at the ridgeline, reminding us that it was indeed winter still. We switchbacked up the rocky ridge to the summit and expansive views of the Teanaway and Stuart Range. I have spent many days in this range scrambling, running, ice climbing, and spring skiing, but this was my first in the winter.

While the giant peaks of the Stuart Range are always awesome, my favorite view of the day was gazing out to incredible fog layer to our south. It filled the entire Cle Elum valley, like the ancient glaciers did 20,000 years ago. We watched slowly the clouds rise throughout the day, swallowing islands of land that stuck out like nunataks in the ice sheet.

On our way up, we had noticed that the southeast aspect still held dry powder. With such a weak sun, at this elevation, any slope that was not due south escaped the heat of the sun. Like on Sahale, we were going to get the rare pleasure of sunny, south-facing, cold powder in Washington!

It was only about 4 inches of fresh, but the surface underneath was perfectly smooth. We screamed down the slope, carving giant GS-turns at max speed above the shining clouds. It was a day full of skinning for 1 minute of pure bliss. I’ll take it!

We took the run down to a water source coming out of the ground around 6k. It appears that the springs run strong all year in the Teanaway, making for the seasonally impressive streams. But in this case, we appreciated the water refill before heading back up one more time. These upper Teanaway slopes held probably no more than 1-2 feet of snow, but the simple sandy slopes do not require much snow to be skiable!

With a skinner already in and cooling temps, the next climb was a breeze. The lowering light over the sea of fog was beautiful.

Since we did not want to exit Standup Creek, our plan was to drop off to the northeast and exit via the Navaho Pass Trail down Stafford Creek. It would be much longer, but it looked like that trail had a nice downhill grade and fewer creek crossings. We would end up being very wrong…

Unfortunately, the snow on the east side of Earl was a bit windcrusted. As we got lower into Stafford Creek, we began a long series of traverses over to the far side of the valley where the trail was. Even at 5,000 ft, the creeks were all raging and somewhat challenging to cross. Even worse, the breakable crust with weak snow beneath made a return. It was exceptionally difficult to traverse in this snow or sidestep upwards when we needed to regain elevation.

Eventually we reached the trail on the far side of the valley and crossed the major creeks. But what I remembered as a nice downhill trail was actually far too flat to ski in such unsupportable snow. There were also intermittent uphills. We gave up on trying to ski out.

Usually, we would have to switch to traditional down skinning at this point. However, I suggested we pull out the G-Skins again. They would allow us to manage modest uphills but still glide downhill well. The steeper downhill pitches were interesting in walk mode with a free heel in the breakable crust, but overall, the G-Skin worked well in this situation! It was a fun challenge for “Dr. Downskin”, as we call Logan.

Still, the exit down Stafford Creek took seemingly forever. We finally reached the road at dark, two hours after we had left the summit of Earl Peak! Yikes! We were both exhausted and ready to cruise 4 miles back to the car.

Unfortunately, that breakable crust was not done with us. I had assumed that we would be able to follow in sled tracks at this point, but it appeared that no motorized user had been up to this point for a while. There were old tracks of some sort, but the weak snow was somehow worse when we tried to skin in the tracks. Instead, we plowed through deep breakable crust on the side, cursing Big Facet for the awful trail breaking.

Finally, two miles later, we encountered our old skin track up Standup Creek. The difference was astounding. We literally doubled our speed, going from probably 2-2.5 mph to more like 4-5 mph. And our mental state flipped from frustration to stoke. This is what the G-Skin was meant for!

By the time we hit the main sled road, we were kicking and gliding like a classic nordic skier. The road was certainly too flat with small uphills to skate, but traditional skins would have been slow. The G-Skin was absolutely perfect for this application.

Earl Peak was a long day with a particularly poor ski-to-effort ratio. However, it was awesome to get to venture out to this zone in mid-winter conditions and the turns we scored off Earl were sublime. Where will the G-Skins take us next?

Notes:

• Our tour was 19+ miles and 6250 ft gain. It took just under 10 hours. We lost probably an hour alone due to the tough skinning conditions down low.
• We also probably lost an hour by choosing to exist Stafford Creek. I cannot recommend this route because of how long and gradual the trail is. We should have just retraced our steps down Standup, or even gone out Bean Creek.
• FS 9703 is not groomed for snowmobiles, so you might be breaking trail on the road if you head up that way.
• The creeks are raging in the winter in the Teanaway! I would pay careful attention to avoiding creek crossings when planning your routes.
• Coverage was very sufficient for the alpine, despite our terrible early season snowpack. Low elevations had enough for following trails, but left creeks very open.
• You need a Sno-Park pass to park at 29 Pines. Do not park in the turnaround of course.
• Maybe I’ll put together a separate post on how to make your own pair of G-Skins in the future, if there is demand.