Washington received an atmospheric river in late October that stretched all the way to Washington Pass, where by then it had cooled into a healthy dose of snow. Since not much of a base had formed yet, there wasn’t much avalanche danger and therefore the pass remained open.

I had wanted to explore the Cutthroat Peak area area in winter, especially after climbing the South Buttress that summer, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Since avalanche forecasts weren’t being performed yet, we wanted to play it conservative and this also seemed like a safe line.

On the way out that morning we saw a few car’s worth of people at Rainy pass, but no one was parked at Cutthroat, we had the whole place to ourselves.

The start of the approach, before crossing the creek, the shoulder we’re going to ski visible on the right.

We basically followed the direct summer trail, there were a couple of skin tracks from what looked like the day before, but not many.

We were able to follow a faint skin track most of the way to above treeline, before the wind finally had the chance to sweep it away.

It was low coverage, being October, but there was still full coverage down low, we even kept our skis on crossing the creek.

As we got higher it became more apparent how unconsolidated the snow was. Had there been a base it would have been stellar, but occasionally a ski would scrape all the way down the side of a hidden boulder. This was more apparent above tree line where wind transport had occurred.

Looking back at the Liberty Group from near the top of the shoulder, Big Kangaroo to the left and the start of Birthday Tour to the right.

We reached to top before where the cliff band started below just as another group caught up to us. They were clearly better skiers than us as they all had bushy mustaches.

We discussed what are plans were for the descent and while we decided to go down the same way we came up for familiarity, they decided to take the open run down the other side of the shoulder, a better run but with an unclear exit.

We finished transitioning, taking in the backdrop surrounding us, and then dropped down the shoulder finding decent snow without many sharks. The soft snow was starting to warm up on the open slopes in the October sun, but it was a short run to treeline.

Our ski tracks with Cutthroat Peak in the background.

We picked our way through the rocks, the worst part of the day, as it was nearly impossible to avoid them in some of the tight steep sections. Making it all the way back across the creek before transitioning again.

Since it was out of season for Washington Pass, it seemed nothing on the East side was open, some places shut down early since it was so sleepy. Something we didn’t really plan for.

We stopped at the Mazama Public House and ran into the other skiers that caught up to us and shared stories. It sounded like the way they went involved a lot more rocky navigation, so we were happy we went the way we did.