Ski and Hike

Two friends and I did a ski and hike trip to Flat Top Mountain last May.

We skiied from the parking through the forest to the base of the mountain, where things were in full melt. From there we switched to shoes and hiked three of Flat Top's four peaks.

An old avalanche below us.

Umm... leave that alone!

That chunk of snow down there is large. Definitely man-height.

There was a small melt water "lake" on top of the first peak.

Second peak, with the Coastals in the background.

The fourth peak, which we did not reach. I think it is the one that earned the name Flat Top, but the label on the map is on the second anything-but-flat peak.

A piece of cornice that is thinking of departing for the valley below.

The cornices were spectacular

There was about 4 km of them along the ridge on the North side of the mountain.

Having fun on a drift up on top.

I didn't take pictures of the ski portion of the trip. Partly it was less scenic, but also I was focussed on keeping myself out of the snow drifts, and my camera was away in my pack. 

On the ski up, we could hear water running under the snow in a number of places. The snow bridged the gaps and caused us no trouble. 

By the time we came down later in the day, these bridges were collapsing. The last 500m or so was bare ground. We had skied over it when we started in the morning. 

So we timed our trip perfectly - the next day it wouldn't have worked.