We were originally thinking about giving the Shuksan Sulphide route a go, but the guys needed to catch 7pm flight, one of whom needed to make it to a wedding the next day!

Not knowing the nature of the Shuksan Sulphide exit (namely how arduous the flat glacier could be in mushy/poor refreeze conditions and the forest section), and needing to account for Seattle traffic, we opted to pick a “safer” tour for their final day.

I suppose the point of having tours in the back pocket is to use them every once in a while - not all spring skiing must happen in the North Cascades after all.

Some steep and rugged peaks in this zone that I forget exists, lots of green

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Morning Star, Del Campo, Gothic peaks

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Copper Lake, looking at Three Fingers and the backside of Whitehorse

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Entrance to the NW line? Looks gnarly

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Ahh a new angle of Glacier Peak in a while

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Eldorado - we were just there!

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Big Rainy

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Spada Lake and the Olympics in the background. Danny did mention that it was cool to ski into the greenery, which I agreed with given the time we’ve spent in the North Cascades so far.

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Some unexpected cracks to dodge while skiing the west couloir

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A slushy and surprisingly fun ski down Headlee Pass - gotta watch out for those moats though!

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Notes

• This was probably ~8 miles and ~5200 feet of vertical gain in around 5 hours.
• I wanted to check out the NW line towards Copper Lake but the entrance did not seem friendly from afar. Maybe it’s a different story up close or maybe it’s better at a different time. The west couloir was eh. I think an up and down tour on Vesper with properly timed corn is worthy in and of itself for the views.