Background
Mt. Shuksan stands shorter than its neighbor Kulshan (Mt. Baker) but it’s a steep skier’s playground. So many beautiful routes, so many plumb lines. Windows for Shuksan usually come in March/April once the snowpack is healthy and storms come in with less wind.
Right on time, a window for Shuksan was coming around in the first week of April. Letty wanted to get out adventure skiing together; climbing season has started for her and she wanted to break up days at the crag with some skiing in the alpine. She’s skied the White Salmon before and wanted to push herself a bit with an adventurous route down Shuksan. We chatted about options and agreed to go give the North Face a look.
The North Face was originally a climbing route up the mountain but soon became a ski route (credit Karl Erickson and Greg Wong in 1979). There are multiple variations down the North Face, with varying levels of spice (classic route, West Face of the North Face, BYS). The North Face starts off with a steep headwall, which mellows out after 500′ or so. The headwall stands high above Price Lake with massive cliffs below; the position is quite striking. After the headwall you have options:
- continue to the northwest for a more exposed traverse over to the BYS Couloir, which takes you down to the bottom of the Northwest Couloir.
- turn skier’s right due north on a snowfield towards a roller around 6,800′ where you can either take a direct line down the north face through rocks or traverse on said roller to below the rock band. Then traverse out west on a flat bench to wrap around to the White Salmon drainage.
All that said, the north face gets a lot of wind out of the Fraser. Getting it in non-wind affected conditions is quite challenging. I’d been up there before, with hopes of skiing it, only to turn around due to wind hammered sastrugi.
Letty and I would go up and have a look. If things weren’t right, we’d fall back to the White Salmon…never a bad consolation prize.
Trip Report
Letty and I drove up the night before and slept in the White Salmon parking lot. Thursday would be the first day after a dusting of new snow and was supposed to be cold for the first half of the day. We set our alarms for 5AM and aimed to get going by 6AM. We anticipated the entrance/exit to the valley might be pretty rugged given the low snow coverage below 4k’.
Well, rugged was exactly what we found. Coverage wasn’t great and there were a few sections of down booting and alder rappelling necessary. Letty fell into an alder hole at one point and broke her pole. Womp…not a great start to the day. Once we got to the bottom we paused, mentally reset, and I got out my repair kit to splint her pole. Lot’s of daylight left…time to turn the day around.
There were quite a few people out and about…great minds think alike, I guess. I saw Max D, met Will G for the first time (who was on a Nooksack Traverse); many were out to ski the Northwest Couloir.
There was plenty of evidence of huge natural slides from the last atmospheric river. Giant debris piles filled the entire White Salmon valley. Getting through them was tedious but not too treacherous.
Once we were through the debris piles and onto the White Salmon we began to cruise uphill. We yo-yo’d with a group of 3 college guys from WWU whom were also going for the North Face. We chatted and shared skinner with them through Winnie’s and the Upper Curtis.
The traverse over from the top of Winnie’s to the Upper Curtis is always stunningly beautiful, with the summit pyramid high above.
We topped out the North Face in just over 5.5 hours, which felt nice given the rough start to the morning. WInds were cranking out of the north, hammering the North Face. The group of 3 and Letty snuck into a wind scoop just next to the entrance while I took my skis off and booted down to look at the upper headwall. I found soft, yet wind affected, snow that would hold a good edge.
Back at the wind scoop, I chatted with Letty. She was intimidated but wanted to give it a try. The group of 3 was eager to drop ahead of us; we let them jump ahead of us, it’d be good to see how it was for them before committing.
The group of 3 found soft, chalk-pow turns down the headwall to the snowfield where it mellows. Letty was feeling more confident after seeing them drop and pushed off. She made controlled jump turns, high above Price Lake.
She radioed to me she was in a safe spot and I dropped, finally pushing off onto the North Face. I was stoked. Chalky pow always feels ideal for steep skiing, not too much slough. I enjoyed the upper headwall and met up with Letty. We waited for the group of 3 to make it down the next snowfield, giving them some room. They skied down to the roller at 6,800′ and motioned for us to wait for a second. They were pushing out skier’s right for the direct sneak through the rocks.
After a few minutes and a wave okay, we skied down towards them. They were scoping the sneak-through. I thought it’d be less exposed and easier to try the traverse in on the roll-over at 6,800′, rather than through the rockband. I’d read multiple reports, before, of people missing the cross-over and having to boot out. I didn’t want to repeat that. I’d marked on the map where I thought it was most obvious.
We told the group of 3 we’d take the left variant on the roll; I pushed off and began skiing down. I triggered a shallow, 3-4 inch wind slab at one point that was quite disconcerting. It seemed to have broken near the rocks, potentially from slough piles. Nonetheless, I really didn’t like that given where we were: high above cliffs over Price Lake. I turned back to Letty and told her to wait in a safe spot. I backed off the panel I was on, made my way over to less slabby snow and made cautious turns down.
Once beneath the panel of concern, I was on the roll at around 6,750′. I thought that a eastward traverse would bring us to a snow ramp that would dump us just beneath the rockband the other group of 3 went through. Tentatively, concerned about triggering another wind slab, I shushed my way across. I was not find the same slab character, which I was very thankful for. It felt very committing, not going to lie.
Before long I was able to see over the roll and sight the group of 3. I shouted to them “Does it go?“, to which they replied “NO!”. I had taken us too low on the traverse, gotten us cliffed out just like the other reports I had dread. DOH! I felt pretty dumb as we booted back up 100′ or so to get back to the top of the roll. We opted to take the group of 3’s sneak through the rockband, which we should have just waited for all along. Taking skis off and booting on the North Face felt like a real Jerry moment.
The sneak through the rocks went smoothly and we were soon skiing good snow again. I tried to put my route finding failure past me. On top of the rockband I could see where I had missed, just 50′ or so too low. Oh well, now I know for next time!
Back in the White Salmon drainage, we fist bumped. We’d turned the day around, from a broken pole to the North Face! Letty was psyched that she had done it, taken it controlled and focused on each little piece.
The exit out of the valley was a sour end to the day but not horrible. A decent booter up the thin forest made for a direct line out, albeit dirty and pretty Cascadian.
Parking lot hangs in the White Salmon parking lot were a great refresher. Looking out at Shuksan, we could see tracks on NWC, our tracks on the North Face, but surprisingly no tracks on the White Salmon! Wild…everyone was out teeing off.
