Distance: 1.7 mi.
Elevation Gain: 1500 ft.
Washington Pass had just opened the previous Wednesday and we had friends that were going to be in Winthrop for the weekend already so we arranged to meet up at the hairpin for some skiing. We arrived around 9 am and struggled to find any remaining parking spaces. Being opening weekend the place was slammed. We managed to find a spot and our friends and were stoked to get some turns. We weren’t really sure what we wanted to ski but pretty much everyone was headed up Spire Gulch to do the birthday tour. We were only up for a short lap due to being out of shape however and thought the gulch itself looked like a good ski.
The skinning started out promising with slightly melted surface snow making travel easy but above the narrow gulch itself the slope steepened slightly and the conditions got icier. Laura and Vanessa switched to booting while James and I continued skinning but we hadn’t brought any ice axes or crampons for the icy terrain. We all ended up booting eventually until we could reach some slightly less steep terrain at about 6700′ where we dug out some seats and had some food while we waited for the snow to soften a bit. There were patches of sun between clouds and it got a bit better but we eventually just decided it was time.
Laura and Vanessa were a bit apprehensive with the still hard snow and the moderately steep angle but we did a traverse to slightly mellower terrain and everyone was having fun after a few turns. The snow was still hard but generally very smooth to make the turns quite fun. We stopped a few times but generally had a blast on the way back to the cars. All in all a pretty nice ski and I would still like to get out and enjoy the longer birthday tour.
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Recommended brew: Hop Capital Wizard IPA
Gear Used:
- Avalanche beacon/shovel/probe
- Backcountry boots/skis/skins
- Day pack
- Glacier glasses
- GPS
- Helmet
- Trekking poles
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