Dear Reader:

I was thrust into the role of narrator unwittingly. Had I know at the time that we went to Excelsior! Ridge in January I would have paid more attention. For the sake of this trip report, humor me and let’s say we went on January 27-28. This seems reasonable because no football would have been played on that weekend owing to the week that the NFL takes off between the conference championships and the Super Bowl. And, if no football was played there’s a good chance I wasn’t at home watching it (corollary: if football is being played I’m at home watching it; my poor, suffering wife can attest, and yet, I digress).

Ok, now that that’s cleared up I bring you: Excelsior! Ridge. In the full interest of disclosure, this was Wade’s idea. The idea was to meet at the Excelsior! Trailhead and follow the trail as far as could until we hit snow, ski the rest of the way to the ridge and camp along the ridge. Seemed reasonable, no? The rub is that the trail-to-the ridge is about 3,500 ft covered in 3-4 miles (again, I didn’t pay all that much attention, but it was long and suffer-worthy. Thanks Wade!). Since we planned on an overnighter everyone’s packs were stuffed to the gills. And, by everyone, I mean me, Angie Vandenhaak, Laurie Sherman, a couple whose names I don’t remember, George Reeves, Jill Youde, and a couple of dogs. Oh yeah, and Wade. So, we trundled up the trail carrying our skis, although a few intrepid souls tried to ski the thinly snow-covered brush and twigs for the first mile or so before the snow was sufficient for everyone to put their skins on. One of the advantages, I suppose, of this trail is that you know you’re pretty well going up and if you keep the creek on your left you can’t go wrong in terms of meeting your destination. And, lo and behold, after about 5 hours we arrived at the top of the ridge. I really can’t tell you a great deal about the skin in – it was long, and mostly uneventful. I do recall knowing we were getting close to the ridge because you can hear the siren song of Northwest Snow Machine (or, as my then 6-year old nephew called them “sno-beelers”). To be honest, I hate the things, but firmly believe that the sno-beelers have as much right to use that part of the land as I do. And, I probably wouldn’t be above taking a ride from one of them, especially if my brother-in-law buys one for next winter. That would be sweet. In any event, we gathered at the pass, which I assume is Excelsior! Pass and noticed a high point that Wade was determined to camp on. Despite the grumblings of, oh, everyone, minority rule prevailed (take that, Democracy!) and we dutifully followed Wade the additional 250ft to the top of the knoll. The highlight of this final 20 minutes was the sno-beeler high-walking above three of us on a steep slope to the cheers of his friend and the curses of Angie. He will forever be remembered to us as “That Jackass.” So, you can imagine our utter dismay when we reached the top and here comes two more sno-beelers to talk. Has anyone else had this happen to them? It’s happened to me twice – find a high point and quickly try and get away from the offending machines, only to have them seek you out to chat. Sure, these Canucks were friendly and all, that’s not the point. That they are so adamant to chat with skiers amuses me. To wit:

Sno-beeler: “Ain’t never seen people on skis up here before.”
Skier: “Yeah, it’s a long day to get here.”
Sno-beeler: “You’re spending the night?” <look of astonishment>
Skier: “Yep.” <removing flask from pack>
Sno-beeler: “Where’d you come up from?”
Skier: “The bottom. Want a drink?”
Sno-beeler: “Sure!”
Skier: “Did you bring any beer?”
Sno-beeler: “Um, no.” <sheepishly>
Skier: “Bummer.” <thinking: why wouldn’t you at least throw a six-pack on that machine?>

After a little more inane chit-chat they were gone, all that remained was the sweet smell of two-cycle (or is it four-cycle) fumes. After they left a handful of us got in a short ski before we got the business of setting up camp. Since this was January we were losing light early so we hustled to dig our sleeping platforms or snow caves and a sweet kitchen area to accommodate the eight of us, plus the dogs. The dinner affair went off without a hitch as food was shared, drink was poured, and a general sense of good times prevailed.

The next morning found us with the same nice, sunny conditions and we packed up and skied back down to the pass and dropped the majority of our gear and four of us, me, Wade, Angie, and Laurie headed in a westerly direction along the ridge to an untracked slope less than a mile away. We even narrowly avoided conversation with sno-beelers. Once we reached the high point above the slope, a pit was dug and the snow conditions were found to be favorable; consolidated snow pack with an increasingly warming inch or two of sweet, sweet corn. I’ll try to paint the scene. The ridge itself extends a l-o-n-g ways. But, we had about a mile of open slopes below the ridge between us and our stuff, as well as the rest of the party. So, we yo-yoed four times from the top of the ridge to as low as we could go before approaching a nasty cliff band and wooded area, working our way back to our gear. It was really quite incredible. I don’t know how much elevation we got that day, but the skiing was fantastic on each yo-yo to the ridge and back down. I think we finally got back to our stuff in the early afternoon and knowing that we had a long hike out, we decided to prepare for the descent and leave only some sweet turns carved into the hill side.

Ah, yes the descent. It really could be its own trip report. The short version: it sucked. But, since you’ve read this much, I’ll try to explain in tendon-ripping detail the joy that was getting the hell out of there.

Remember that part about keeping the creek on the left as we ascended? Well, we figured we’ll keep it on our right as we descend with the added bonus of actually skiing the snow covered creek! This seemed like a great idea. It wasn’t. After we committed to this plan of attack it began to be apparent that this would be a lot more work than it at first seemed because of the many permutations the creek made, the ups, the down, the rock hard snow. It just wasn’t fun. So, we made it out of the creek and onto our tracks from the previous day and proceeded to kill ourselves coming out this way. The trees were tight and the snow conditions were awful. So, a smart few took their skis off and proceeded to carry them out. Others of us stubbornly refused to carry our skis and perfected the delicate ski-fall-over turn or the grab-tree-half-slide in order to manage our descent. Yours truly toughed it out until a head-over-heels plunge into a running snow-covered creek that was, frankly, painful. It was that moment of being upside down with my knees wrenched behind me that I thought to myself, “Self, take your *&$^%#$ skis off and walk.” So, I did and all was good.

It’s worth noting that those that took their skis off early beat everyone else to the parking lot. I think we all made it to the cars by about 4:30pm or so which made the descent time around 2-3 hours. A few ibuprofens and the sweet turns up high were all that I could think about. My guess is that what we skied doesn’t see that many skiers. Certainly no sno-beelers would ride that line (at least, I don’t think they would). It was a really nice overnight trip and the ski conditions were pretty awesome. The trail conditions left a little to be desired, but south facing routes in winter can sometimes suck. I think I’ll be going back there, at least, I hope so. Especially if my brother-in-law buys that snow machine. Sweet.