After taking the Memorial Day weekend off from skiing + a few more days, a big day was on order. Chose to head for Rampart Lakes via the Lake Lillian fishermen trail. Met up w/ Jerad at Hyak around 8AM and at the snow line just a few minutes walk before the TH 20 minutes later. Strapped the skis on the pack and started through all the Alder hanging over the trail. Lots of water moving in all the creeks from all the past rain, but the sun was out Saturday! Made our way up towards Laura Lake and after the second steep pitch on Summer trail we hit snow. Still left the skis on the pack all the way to Lillian. Put the skins on there and made our way up and out booting the last 100′ to the ridge. Wham! Lots of snow in this zone still, made our way for Rampart Ridge for great views North and into Gold Creek. Did our first ski all the way down to the first most Southern lake and hit a couple more skis in that zone (the snow skied great on the steeper slopes and in the bed surface for me, but lower angles had “walls” of pasty snow that would grab the skis) before making our way back to Lake Lillian which yielded two more nice ski descents not including the final (good and firm on the steeps) ski down on to Lake Lillian.

The snow was icothermic on the sun effected East slopes where we triggered a couple nice sized growlers. The final ski down to Lillian on the South face skied much better and was quite stable. On the way out probed the Lake in center and hit an ice layer I couldn’t penetrate at 6′ down.

Good zone for people wanting to get away from the sleds in the Winter (but you might want a sled to shorten the 5 mile slog to “Summer Time TH).

Live to Ski Another Day!
TNT