Gallery: YellowAsterButte07

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The Setup

In late October 2006 we hiked in with a bunch of food, stoves, and tents and cached them at the base of a tree to prepare for my second ski trip to Yellow Aster Butte. For years Andrew and I have talked about caching gear to make for a very comfortable winter ski trip. I was beginning to think this would remain for ever something talked about but never done. Then Andrew motivated us to actuall do it this year.

Andrew and I skied Yellow Aster Butte in 2003. We carried in all our equipment, camped in more primitive shelters, and had harsher conditions. Read more about that trip in it's gallery

Richard standing by the cache of gear.

Two days before the trip I was able to over fly the area. Our camp will be in the treed ridge in the right 1/3rd of this picture.

Trip in

We parked at about 2000 ft. on the Mt Baker Highway, skied up the road then an old trail.

	My skis.		Marie
	Marie nearing camp.		Andrew and Richard digging for the Cache. It was about 4 feet deeper and between them.
	Andrew setting up his tent.		Marie setting up our tent.
	One of the things we cached was my mega-mid for use as a cook tent.		The weather was clear and tempatures very cold at night but it turned out to be reasonably warm in the cook tent.

First day of skiing.

We split into two groups. Richard, Andrew, Marie, and I skied the treed slopes just below camp. These turned out to have very nice powdery snow and interesting treed terrain.

	Early morning light.		Josh.
	Our first run went up from camp the off the ridge to the right. Josh and others climbed onto the ridge.		This is what camp and the slope above looked like in October.
	Marie at the bottom of our first run.	View Media (movie)	Andrew at the bottom of our first run.
	Andrew.		Skining back up to camp.
	Andrew.		Mount Tomahoy(sp?).
	In the afternoon we skiied up to the ridge. Here Andrew is about to drop into a north facing gully I spotted from the air.	View Media (movie)	Andrew skiing down the gully.
	Me climbing back from the gully run.		Me.
	Richard and me.		Richard.
	Andrew and Richard at the top of our final run.		Our final run. Snow very good.
	Andrwe back in camp.		The other team skied Yellow Aster Butte in the afternoon.

Ski day 2

	The cook tent.		Once the sun was up it was very pleasant to stand around cooking. We produced scones this morning.
	Tracks from an evening run down from camp.
	Andrew baking and brewing coffee for us.		Andrew
	Andrew and Josh after rolling down the slope in a wrestling match.

Josh and Sema were heading out today so we all took a run down the slopes directly below camp. I went down first and took short movies of people skiing down.

View Media (movie)	Josh skiing.	View Media (movie)	Sema skiing.
View Media (movie)	Richard skiing.	View Media (movie)	Stacy skiing.
	Josh and Andrew at the bottom of our run.		Andrew and myself.
	Andrew and Richard skining back up.

The rest of us then toured back over to the north facing gully, which I dubbed the "practice gully" because it was fairly moderate. The snow in the gully itself was good. From the bottom of the gully we were able to continue another 500 ft through the trees in event better snow.

Unfortunately, this day brought more clouds and wind. It was quite cold on the ridge we skied up.

	Skiing up the ridge		Andrew
	Richard and Marie	View Media (movie)	Andrew skiing into the gully.
View Media (movie)	Marie, Richard, and Stacy skiing up the ridge.

We took another fine run down the slope facing camp then had an early evening.

Ski out

	Andrew and Stacy at breakfast.		Me and Marie.
			It snowed a couple inches over night.
	The kitchen after taking down the megamid.		Andrew.
	Everyone. On the trip out our packs were heavy with the gear we had cached.

Cache get

In mid May Andrew, Josh and I hiked in to get the remaining gear. I was afraid it would melt out and didn't want to leave the gear any longer. Turned out there was no danger of that.

	Foggy weather.		Turned out there was a lot of digging. We had to dig down about 6-7 feet, nearly as much as in January.
View Media (movie)	Digging		Josh took one run but conditions were poor. There was no sign of camp, though our packed snow was probably still covered.

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Page last modified:  Sep 05 19:07 2010  by  Tom Unger