North Sister - Thayer Glacier Headwall 2/17/2008
Trip: North Sister - Thayer Glacier Headwall
Date: 2/17/2008
Trip Report:On Sunday, Chris and I headed into North Sister via Pole Creek. I have been wanting to ski the Thayer Headwall for awhile and was shut down three times last spring due to poor conditions. After seeing how good things were on Saturday, I had a feeling the Thayer was going to be in good shape.
The road was plowed for a little ways, but stopped about 7-8 miles and about 2000 vertical from the trailhead. Not to be detered, we brought skate gear and skated in on the nice, firm crust.
Chris skating in.
We ditched the skate gear at the trailhead and skinned the rest of the way in.
Chris approaching the East Face of North.
We went our seperate ways and I booted up the thayer headwall route.
The conditions were super with 3-4 inches of corn on top of a firm base. I stopped at the saddle between the two summit pinnacles (about 50 feet below the summit) and headed down.
Looking down from the top of the Thayer Headwall.
Half way down the route.
The conditions were perfect corn skiing, as good as it gets in a very cool alpine setting....until I skied close to where the route pinches down and faces more directly East instead of the top SE aspect. This was now in the shade and was quite firm and still pretty steep. I had to side slip for a ways through the notches until the angle lessoned and I could get back onto some softer snow.
We met back up at the base of the east face, packed up, and skied out.
Cruising back on the road with much lighter gear on our backs.
