Trip Report | Guided Tour with NCMG and Ascent Outdoors
Despite rumors to the contrary, there is light, dry snow to be skied in the Cascades. In a chance to dry out from the endlessly wet experience that is skiing on Snoqualmie Pass, some of our Summit Sales NW team headed over to the east side of the Cascades with some of the crew from Ascent Outdoors to link up with some of the guides at North Cascade Mountain Guides for a few days of backcountry skiing around Washington Pass. Ascent Outdoors is one of our longstanding Norrøna retailers in Seattle, and North Cascade Mountain Guides is one of our uniform partners with Norrøna. It turned out to be a great group that shared lots of deep turns and lots of laughs.
After introductions and some refreshers and practice on avalanche safety and rescues down at the NCMG office in Mazama, we headed to the end of the road in town and traded the cars for snowmobiles for the 16-mile ride up to Washington Pass. After a frigid ride up the pass, we were greeted with incredible weather and conditions: spurts of sun and clouds, no wind, and untracked, fluffy powder. Larry and Josh, our fantastic guides (and owners of NCMG) showed us the goods all day long with shockingly pleasant skintracks, great snow, and fantastic terrain. Getting to go with experienced guides who know exactly where to put you to maximize all of the turns you just earned is quite the treat!
The second day was more of the same, with a long snowmobile ride up Highway 20 (aided that day by some helpful grooming from the Washington DOT snowcats) followed by hours of blissful touring. While we didn’t get a second straight day of zero winds and good visibility, the awesome snow and great company proved to be plenty enough of a distraction to keep the spirits high (not to mention Norrøna keeping us warm and dry in the elements out there!). You know it’s a special day when you realize it doesn’t matter if you ski the line first or last because there is still enough space and snow for the last skier make their own tracks down without having to cross anyone else’s. The sadness of ending the last run of this epic trip was tempered by knowing that we had a scenic (and arguably fun!) snowmobile ride (with heated grips to warm us up) back down the pass.
After getting back to the trailhead that second afternoon, we reminisced on what an incredible few days we had had skiing together, and our group parted ways to head back to our respective homes, sustained on the long slog back to Seattle that evening by tacos and reliving powder turns.
