Dawn is breaking here on Lick Creek Road, just north of Slide Rock. We are parked at a snow bank across the road that is too much for the Jetta to handle, and there is a slight problem. The snow on the road, left over from avalanche debris this winter, is really about as much snow as we can see. It looks like we may have struck out here. We know the snow is there, it is just a lot higher than we were expecting, AND it will involve a ton of bushwhacking to get to it.
It is time to rethink the plan. As we drive back to Jim’s place in McCall, we start to talk about options. There would be the Sawtooths or the Lost Rivers and we could hit either one of them this weekend. But then Jim remembers that the gate up to Snowbank Mountain may be open today, (it is the last Saturday in May). We decide to give it a try, because there will be great skiing off of Granite Peak and it is on our way towards the other possibilities anyway.
The gate is open. Yahoo!!! The Jetta makes short work of the 11+ mile and 3,500 feet of elevation gain. This seems like cheating, but we know that whatever we ski down into we still have to climb back out under human power, so technically this is still a back country outing. The skiing is great, we get 3 laps in and although there are tons of snowmobiles and a big crowd for the annual backcountry terrain park extravaganza, we don’t have anybody on the area of the mountain that we are skiing.
Yes, you have to make plans and do your homework, but sometimes you don’t get to do what you set out to do and it is then that you just want to roll with the flow.
GPS Data and map of the Snowbank Mountain adventure:
