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Arrowhead Mountain ski
GPS Data: Map, Track, Waypoints
Click here for GPX
GPS eXchange format file.
Click here for TPO TOPO.EXE format
file.
Click here for GDB Garmin format file.
Waypoints:
- Start of tour
- Parking
- Sumit
- Glades
- Road forks
GPS Stats and other info:
- Milage: 7.4 miles includes skinning to the summit of Arrowhead,
skiing back down to 4150 and then hiking up to 5400 on the NE ridge of Jim
Hill
- Time: 7 hours
- Elevation: Top of Arrowhead is 6030. Our high point on the NE ridge
of Jim Hill was about 5350 but a better descent would start at about 5500.
Total elevation gain for this trip about 4500.
Logistics:
- Drive 7.4 miles past Stevens Pass ski area on highway 2 and park where
ever you can. There's a broad plowed access road to the train tracks that
works pretty well. It used to be that you could park at the east end of the
train tunnel (1 mile back toward Stevens Pass) but now there are no parking
signs there. There may or may not be a couple other parking spots plowed out
near this one.
- From the train track access road, climb straight uphill, cross the tracks
and head up and right of an electrical tower. Find your way through a narrow
band of thick, young forest to a road above. Follow the road up 1.7
miles to 4000 feet where you find the bottom of a skiable meadow. Climb the
left side of the meadow to its top. Continue up and left. Traverse under and
right of an obvious, large rock face to find another, steeper meadow.
Continue up the left side of this meadow to eventually gain the top.
The map shows the uptrack only
from parking to the summit of Arrowhead Mtn and from the bottom of the Middle
glade up the NE ridge of Jim Hill to the farside bowl. The Green circles show
the open glades.
Trip Report
03/02/08 Skied Arrowhead Mtn and up onto the NE ridge of Jim Hill w/ Russ,
Al, Tammy, Matt K, and Mike.
We found the road above the parking spot and followed it forever... It would
have been good to cut uphill if conditions allowed and you knew where you were
going... The road ends at the bottom of the middle glade. This is worth yo-yoing
if you don't want to go to the top. We continued up. We reached the upper meadow
and continued up its left side. The conditions were a few inches of new on top
of hard crusty ice which made skinning difficult. It's steep here and we
eventually gave up and booted the rest of the way to the top.
Ran into a bunch of snow shoers on top... basked in the intermittent sunshine
and took in the cloudy views.
We skied back more or less the way we came up. The top is always a little
tricky, crusty, icy crap and shallow, wind blown drifts and small trees that
threaten to snag you on the way. This pretty quickly opens into narrow glades
and the snow just gets better and better. Eventually all the glades merge into a
wide meadow.
We skied back into the woods the way we had come up, eventually reaching and
skiing the middle glade. From the top of Arrowhead, we had seen two fine ski
tracks to the west descending a nice looking bowl from the NE ridge of Jim Hill.
We look around for their uptrack but find none and decide to explore in that
direction anyway.
From the west side of the middle glade, we enter the woods, gain the ridge up
and to the right and just continue up and up. I'm draggin' this day and my
friends mercifully stop a couple hundred feet short of the good entrance to the
bowl. Here we rest, snack and then traverse off the ridge, entering the bowl
from the side and sking about 300 feet. (The ski from the top of this would have
been fine). The ski out from here was kind of a pain - ski down and left about
400 feet till you get back to the top of the middle glade.
From here, we skied the middle glade, followed the road out the bottom to the
top of the lower glade and then straight down. The snow became more and more...
uh... spring like on the descent. Near the bottom there's always an interesting
problem to get through the thin band of thick forest to reach the bottom.
Related Links
Pics at Turns-All-Year website:
http://www.turns-all-year.com/goldhome3/hp114/
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