Blissful Blewett Bootop

The 2024-25 winter season has been kind to the Eastern Cascades. While driving over Blewett Pass to the Methow for our nordic ski trip, I noticed that the snowpack was looking unusually good for this early in the season. So the next weekend, I returned to Blewett with John, Chris, Logan, and Wyatt. We drove over Snoqualmie Pass in rain and fog and broke into glorious sunshine as we drove up to Blewett.

I have skied quite a few times around Windy Knob and Tronsen Head, but never explored Diamond Head, the third of the main Blewett Pass peaks. We started by skinning up the the drainage between Diamond Head and Windy Knob, following XC-130, a backcountry nordic trail that is maintained by volunteers. We took this all the way to the Wind / Diamond saddle, and then hooked back to the NE edge of Diamond Head. This was definitely not the most efficient route.

There were tracks from the previous day with a few inches of fresh snow, but the skiing was still good! This run is a little steeper than Tronsen Head, with fun chutes up high.

At the bottom of the run, we decided to skin more directly back up to County Line and the NE Ridge. Along the way, we ran into Rob, the self-proclaimed “Mayor of Blewett”, who has spent many years maintaining the trails here.

There was still enough fresh snow to entice us into a second run. This time, we found some beautiful tree hallways – the signature of Blewett.

Given the strong Blewett snowpack, we decided to check out the west side of Diamond Head. There are impressive runs on this side, but there typically is not enough snow. We had to skin a ways south across the Diamond Head plateau before eventually finding a place where we could drop in. Even then, we still hit quite a few rocks at the top. But once we dropped below the wind scored top 100 ft or so, the snow was incredible. We zoomed down a blissful 1000 ft of open terrain, dodging sharks lurking beneath the surface. I think this was the best run I’ve ever done at Blewett!

The west face of Diamond Head is massive, with many different runs. Anything protruding, like a ridge, was scraped down to rocks. But the concavities held great powder. We threw down a bunch of runs, gradually working our way northward back to the car.

On our final run, we follow the headwaters of Swauk Creek down to FS 9716. We had to do a fair amount of skating through the flats, but we were able to make our way back to the car without skinning.

This was a super fun day, skiing good snow and exploring new terrain! Blewett Pass seems to always provide good vibes and good times.