Snowshed Head: unexpectedly interesting

Ian and I parked at the south end of Gold Creek Sno Park, where a Subaru stands out among all the snowmobile exhaust and beefy trucks. The first few miles on the road was snowmobile territory. We left that behind when we took the right fork of the road toward Resort Creek Pond. Right before the pond we left the road and skied up to the northwest ridge of Snowshed Head.

Snowshed Head is right above the troublesome section of I-90 that has all the avalanche closures. There are a lot of interesting things to see up there like winches (for transporting the explosives?), a tree house (for avalanche control personnel to sleep in?), and a storage box for explosives (kind of like a bear box except it keeps people out). There are also many areas with good views of the Snoqualmie Pass peaks and mountains to the south and east.

After taking a long lunch and enjoying the views from the top, we skied down the SE ridge back to the road. This was a decent ski.

We followed the road back to Resort Creek Pond and reached the pond just in time to see a DOT cat come down the road that leads to the top of Snowshed Head. The descent from the pond back to the cars was fun because the road is steep enough to keep a decent speed, but stressful because we had to keep a watch on our tails for snowmobiles.

All in all it was a fun, lazy, and interesting day.

Date:

2008/03/02

Elevation gain:

1,330 feet

Trip type:

backcountry ski

USGS quad:

Stampede Pass

In:

Yakima Valley

Car-to-car:

6 hours 15 minutes

32 minutes driving there from Capitol Hill to North Bend
33 minutes driving there from North Bend to Gold Creek Sno Park
3 hours 27 minutes ascending from Gold Creek Sno Park to top of Snowshed Head
2 hours 28 minutes descending from top of Snowshed Head to Gold Creek Sno Park

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