After my solo Sahale debauchery, I wanted to return to the Cascade Pass area to ski some bigger lines. The weather looked good, and the usual suspects Adam and Matt were down to team up with new (to me) ski buddies Forrest and Hana to get after it. With warming forecast for the afternoon, we wanted to get an early start and be out of the mountains by the early afternoon. We settled on the Banana Couloir as a tentative objective, a relatively less popular couloir on the NE side of Magic Mountain, high above the Yawning Glacier. On Friday night, we headed up the Cascade River Road, where Matt and Adam and I got to snuggle in the bed of Matt’s truck. When our alarms went off at 3:55 am, none of the three of us were particularly thrilled, but Forrest had insisted on 3:55 instead of 4am “to get us in right mood.”
The Banana Couloir is smack-dab in the middle of this photo (which I took a week earlier from Sahale), dropping down and looker’s left from a subsummit of Magic Mountain.
We left the cars at the Johnson Cabin gate and walked easily up the Cascade River Road under the night sky. We started skinning by headlamp at Soldier Boy Creek, and reached the Cascade Pass Trailhead just as the first bit of light appeared in the sky.
The group heading towards Cascade Pass by headlamp at dawn, with the Triplets up at right.
We skinned easily to a short booter past the headwall, then continued up easy terrain directly towards Mix-Up arm as the first rays of the morning sun hit Johannesburg and the Triplets above us. It was a gorgeous day, but already, with the sun barely up, a philosophical division in the group was starting to show: Matt and I generally opt to skin and avoid booting if at all possible, and we enjoy the smug sense of moral superiority this strategy offers us, even if the actual travel may at times be less efficient. Forrest and Hana, on the other hand, tend to take a “fastest line possible” approach, and won’t hesitate to remove their skis if they think it’ll be faster.
As such, Forrest and Hana continued to boot up Mix-Up Arm even after Matt and Adam and I switched back to skinning, and the early morning conditions meant that we were truly neck-in-neck. Matt, never one to get second place, quickened his pace perceptibly every time he looked over at Forrest kicking steps parallel to our kick turns. We all converged on the crest of the arm, arriving truly within seconds of one another - Round 1 was a draw, but the day was still young.
Heading into the morning sun on top of Mix-Up Arm.
Reunited on the arm, we needed to start traversing towards the Cache Glacier. I suggested that we traverse low, across a steep wind lip, to save an extra 100 or so feet of climbing. Forrest and Hana, who are far more familiar with the area than I (and had been there literally 24 hours earlier) foolishly agreed, and some minor faffery followed - lesson learned. Next time I’ll defer to Forrest.
Adam breaking trail along Mix-Up Arm towards the Cache Glacier, with Pelon Peak shaded at left, and the spiky summit of Magic Mountain to the right.
We skinned along easy terrain to one final short, steep step. Forrest, the booting optimist, quickly removed his skis while Matt and I skinned upwards. Much to our delight, Forrest wallowed in the deep snow while Matt and I cruised past him - one point for Team Skinning. Past there, it was easy going past a short skins-on descent to gain the Cache Glacier, and before long we were making a final few kick turns to reach Cache Col, where the cornice posed no issues, and we were rewarded with our first stunning views of Spider and Formidable.
Forrest booting slowly as Matt and I set a beautiful, elegant, and efficient skintrack past him.
Adam making a final kick turn below Cache Col, with gorgeous views of Mix-Up behind him, and Torment and Forbidden in the distance.
We ripped skins at Cache Col and started skiing down some crusty but fun terrain with incredible views. At 6,400 feet, about 250 feet above Kool Aid Lake, we started our climb up towards the top of the Banana, which after looking at the map we thought would go from the south side, which seemed more pleasant than booting up the whole thing. With firm snow, we started out booting, but it quickly became wallowy, so Matt and I switched to skinning. None of the others seemed interested in following our lead, so Matt and I derived an immense amount of pleasure from cruising past Adam, Hana, and Forrest in their bootpack, arriving at the top of the couloir well ahead of them. With only a few hundred vertical feet to go, the remaining three saw the error of their ways and put their skis back on, as Matt and I watched from far above. Definitive victory for Team Skinning. Once at the top of the couloir, we peered over the lip - it was spectacular, steep but not too steep, narrow but not too narrow, and it dropped almost 3,000 vertical feet straight down into Pelton Basin. Adam dropped in first.
Adam making his first turn at the top of the Banana, with Pelton Basin far below and Bucker and the Ripsaw Ridge in the distance. Boston and Sahale barely out of frame at the left.
The skiing in the Banana was pretty good, a bit variable and wind affected in places. Plenty of sluff meant we had to stop fairly frequently to let it run ahead of us. Everyone did a great job skiing, and before long, we were most of the way down. At this point we watched a decently sized natural avalanche release below us, trigged by a small cornice failure, and it ran down onto the skin track of a party climbing up the Yawning Glacier below us - a good reminder that things we warming up and we had plenty of distance to go to get back to the car.
At the bottom of the couloir, we cranked hard skier’s right and made a short bonus climb up the Alliteration Col at the top of the Yawning Glacier, where we took in stunning views of Trapper Mountain. We skied down the Yawning Glacier into Pelton basin, with good skiing up top, and manky crust down low.
Hana, Matt, Forrest, and Adam at Alliteration Col, with Trapper Mountain in the distance.
Adam making turns in the sun on the Yawning Glacier.
In Pelton Basin we threw skins on for our last hot climb up to Cascade Pass. As we headed up the valley, there were plenty of natural slides coming down from Mix-Up Arm and the steep cliffs below the Cache Glacier. We were thankful for our early start. Once at Cascade Pass, we climbed back up Mix-Up a sporting distance for a nice final descent back down to the summer trailhead. A quick ski down the road and then a short walk brought us back to our cars.
Forrest and Adam skinning up towards Cascade Pass, with Pelton Peak and Pelton Basin behind them. The Yawning Glacier is right of Pelton Peak with Alliteration Col at its top, and the true summit of Magic looks spiky from this vantage point at the far upper right of the frame.
Nice turns down the west side of Mix-Up Arm on our last descent.