After getting back from Chamonix a couple weeks ago, I've been hungry (starving, you might say) for steep skiing. Here in Seattle though, one can't just walk to the Midi cable car and be taken to a ice and rock paradise 13k up... but beautiful wild mountains await those ready to put in the effort to get there...
Last Sunday 18th I skied the main couloir on the NW face of Columbia in the Montecristo area with good old Aaron the DHo.
I'd been wanting to investigate this area for a bit, and in pictures in Beckey's guide and John Scurlock it looked like it had a nice couloir coming off the summit. Unfortunately, this is now above a rock band, it seems 76 glacier has thinned considerably, so we ended up skiing the more open couloir to its north.
Taken from the road to Montecristo, Columbia peak is on the right
Parked at the gate on Barlow Pass, we had bikes hoping there wouldn't be much snow but we dumped them just pass the river crossing. Went up the eastside of 76 creek towards the head of the valley and eventually turned eastwards towards the 76 glacier. Apart from a short crappy section where we postholed up steep hollow tree ridden snow, skinned all the way to the foot of the NW face. There, short moderately steep climb up the main couloir to the ridge line.
Our original pla, the coulie that comes off the main summit... with no climbing gear with us, we had no way to make it over the rock barrier at the bottom.
We were hoping earlier to maybe reach the summit from there, but once we arrived at the ridge, realised it wasn't going to happen...
Looking towards the main summit from the top of the couloir
Snow was pretty awful (saturated glop) but the terrain was really fun. The couloir skied not too bad...
Aaron near the top, with Puget Sound in the background
Steep skiing is fun
The rest of the ski was more perfunctory than anything else... The cycle out was fun
All in all a fun ski in a remote place with a not-so-bad access...
