Seeking Dry Snow Before the Wet
Early January brought the first real good snowfall to Snoqualmie Pass, with 2-3 feet at cool temperatures during the week. Unfortunately, it was forecasted to warm up right in time for the weekend, with rain quickly moving in. My friend Jonah and I wanted to get in a little skiing before the rain, but coming up with a tour plan was challenging. Trees were bombed out after the warm up the day before, alpine slopes seemed risky with wind effect, and solar slopes were crusted. I suggested that we trek to very back corner of the Commonwealth drainage to ski some steep NW facing trees beneath the Kendall Katwalk. Remarkably, this accessible zone is not listed in any guidebook, so I will call it the “Katwalk Trees”.
We started from a busy Snoqualmie Pass, skinning up the Commonwealth. The snow was refrozen solid, but we started to find patches of drier powder as we increased in elevation. The skintrack around the waterfall was absolutely atrocious – it climbed all the way to the waterfall, an unnecessary avalanche risk. We had to descend from there and start breaking trail deeper up the valley.
I had skinned once before up into the NE corner of the Commonwealth, when I skied from Snoqualmie Pass to US2 on the Snoqualmie Haute Route. There are some annoyances with mini trees in an avalanche path, but it isn’t too bad overall.
It took us about 2 hours to reach the base of a steep valley. To our north, Red Mountain held steep south facing chutes and cliffs. To our south, there were a series of steep chutes and trees. It was all complex terrain, so we were glad to have pretty good stability for the day. We considered skinning towards the Katwalk, but were concerned about putting ourselves directly beneath slopes in the warm sun. Instead, we climbed up through the steep NW facing trees and chutes. It was most definitely an “advanced” skin track, although we never had to boot all the way to the ridge.
LiDAR is a huge help with such complex treed terrain. We took a run through a hidden chute to our right. The powder was a bit stale from the warm temperatures, but it still was fun to ski! The terrain was super playful, with mysteries around each corner and plenty of features to jump off.
On our second lap, we climbed to an open spot on the ridge, with a wonderful view of the Kendall Adventure Zone and Alpine Lakes Crest to the north.
I had to be home early for a baby shower, so we made our second run our final run. We took off to skier’s left, skiing through some open slopes and a tight little chute.
The Commonwealth was a long exit, with an annoying amount of side stepping, but we never bothered to put skins back on. In the warm sun, we were sweating like crazy as snow bombs dropped from the trees. While it is impressive how wet you can get when it is precipitating at Snoqualmie, it is even more remarkably how soaked you can get when it is not!
This was a fun little tour with Jonah, exploring an overlooked corner of the Snoqualmie Backcountry. It was relatively high effort, and the conditions that drove us here were rather specific, but the views and skiing were quite enjoyable!