Mt Shuksan Ski Mountaineering

Mt Shuksan (9,131ft) via Sulphide Glacier

May 5, 2018

Eric, Greg, Birkan

Birkan and I left town Friday evening looking to take advantage of a 1-day weather window Saturday. This is prime time for backcountry skiing in the cascades, with snow level near the trailheads and sunny days, so we were hoping to ski Mt Shuksan. I’d climbed Shuksan in February 2015 with Matthew using snowshoes as an overnight trip, but I’ve heard it is even funner skiing.

We drove up Baker Lake Road, then FR 1152 on the south side of Shuksan, and reached snow around 2,500ft, just a half mile before the

trailhead. Birkan was a bit ambitious trying to drive his new outback through a deep patch of snow, and we got stuck. No amount of pushing helped, so we got out and started digging around 9:30pm.

Soon after, a big van arrived behind us and several people got out to help. We got the car out, then dug a path through the snow drift and made it about 30ft farther up the road until we encountered an even bigger snow patch. We decided to call it quits, and went to sleep for the night.

We got up at 3am, and I looked around for Greg’s car. He said he would likely meet up with us later. Sure enough, I found his maroon outback near ours, and woke him up. He had arrived

pretty late, and probably only got a few hours of sleep, but immediately started packing up.

By 3:30am we were moving, just behind another group of three skiers. We ambitiously put the skis on at the car, but the snow was discontinuous, and we eventually had to take the skis off and hike about a mile to 3,000ft. The snow was finally continuous, and we started skinning up.

Around sunrise at a very steep section Birkan was feeling sick and decided to return to the car. Greg and I continued,

closely behind another group of three skiers. We soon crested Shannon Ridge and got a great view of Mt Baker to the west. Another group of four skiers had camped on the ridge and were just breaking down camp.

The snow was icy by this point, and we put the skis on our backs and kicked steps up a steep slope to gain the crest of the next ridge. Here I put on ski crampons, and we traversed beneath a cliff face on a steep side slope, then ascended gradual slopes to the base of the Sulphide Glacier. I followed a solo set of ski tracks that were a few days old, and navigation was easy.

In total, ten other skiers and our group were going about the same

pace, and were leap frogging each other all along the glacier. Groups would take breaks at different times, but we all moved up at about the same rate. Some fun traversing brought us to the base of the summit pyramid around 10:30am.

The snow was too steep and icy to justify bringing the skis any higher, so we switched to crampons. Greg took a break at the base, while I followed the other group steeply up to the summit. The ice ax was indispensible on this slope.

By 11:30am, we all reached the summit, a narrow flat snow ledge. The skies were clear and the views amazing in all directions. We saw the pickets to the east, Baker to the west, and Glacier Peak and Rainier to the south.

I soon retreated and carefully downclimbed back to my skis. Greg had been monitoring the weather, and noted that the clouds were building. Glacier Peak now was covered in clouds, and Rainier was no longer visible. The expected precipitation was coming, so it was time to head down.

We carried the ski up a little bit higher to get a few extra turns, then started skiing down. The skiing was fun and fast on the corn snow. There were a few sections that were flat and required skate skiing, but eventually we got to continuous downhill skiing.

The snow softened as we descended, and we set off some small slides on the steep traverse, but nothing major. We made it back to the trees, then after a few navigation issues successfully returned to the trail. By 3,000ft we hit the edge of snowline, for a 5,500ft+ ski descent. After a short walk back we returned to the car at 2:45pm and drove back to Seattle.

 

 

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