Lane Peak, Zipper Couloir March 29, 2013

Lane Peak, The Zipper couloir climbers left and The Fly to climbers right

The Tatoosh are an amazingly aesthetic group of mountains off the south of Mt. Rainier that I had always eyed while riding around Paradise.

Eastern Tatoosh range in the background

While taking this picture during some mellow laps April 2012 I spotted a nice line directly behind Jen.

Lane Peak lines up directly with Mt Hood behind it

"Look at that couloir, that looks nice," I said. Jen replied, "why aren't we over there?" Good question, WHY ARE WE OVER HERE!? We packed it in and headed home and did some quick mapping of the route. The next day we came back, Jen climbed "The Fly" and nearly topped out, but had a poor snow for the run down. I got turned back on "The Zipper" due to rock and snow fall coming in as it got warm. It had been eating at me ever since.

This Friday looked like a perfect time to go back, we were hoping for some corn over firm snow and crossing our fingers that cornices had all fallen the day prior. The approach was uneventful, other then some interesting downhill tele-split skiing on my part.

Approaching the base of Lane Peak. Lovers Lane couloir on the left, maybe next time?

We easily found a not too sketchy bridge over the creek and I set about making a skin track up to the base of the couloir. Setting the skin track was insteresting with some hard cornice fall/avy debris to navigate up at around 35 degrees. Getting the first view of couloir got me as excited as a kid in disneyland, how could you NOT get stoked on this!?

MMMM TASTY

Jen ended up taking over breaking trail since her ski boots dug into the harder snow better (this is also when I realized that I NEEDED crampons). We took a runnel bed surface most of the way up, alternating watching and hiking just in case of some errant rock fall.

Please don't fall on me

The boot up went pretty easy overall and we made fairly quick progress.

Nearly topped out

Getting to the top was great, but a bit anti-climactic. I would have never expected that the south east side was soooo mellow. I also saw some more tasty lines another valley away, there is always more to ride in the cascades.

A view to the south, look at the peak on the right.......

I dropped in first and took the first few turns a bit conservatively to get a feel for the snow. Minimal slough, great edge hold, and it wasn't too gloppy. I got to a safe spot bellow a rock after the crux and radioed for Jen to ski down so I could get a singular action shot.

The lone skiing shot ,at the crux

I took riders right of the runnel after this and had absolutely amazing turns slashing up the rock walls. Once there's no real exposure things get fun. We grabbed our skins and other junk hiding in a tree and rode out the lower portion of the slop toward the creek.

Looking back at a job well done. The zipper wraps up to the left out of view.

The tour out was easy, even stopped for a game of tic-tac-toe in the woods

Drunk at work

Made it back to the car and enjoyed a Rainier before 3pm. Great rewards for such an easy day!