Apathy in the Missions

In early May, Jeffrey and I were able to connect during a spell of high pressure for a day in the missions.  With an early departure from town and a nice forecast, we had high hopes for an awesome day.  Our plan was to head up to lucifer and picture lakes and then ski “whatever looked good.”  The dry trail to mission falls went smoothly but we lost the rough climber’s trail once or twice on the way to lucifer lake but eventually found our way, 3.5 hours into the day (slower than planned).  We skated across the lake before making the short climb to picture lake.  

garden wall, from picture lake

With the strong sun quickly warming E and S aspects, we opted to climb and ski the S face of shoemaker before it got too baked.  We managed to skin about halfway before transitioning to spikes and booting to the summit.  The ensuing run was marginal, already being too soft and grabby despite being firm enough minutes prior to warrant crampons.  From the bench below the run, we sought shade to discuss our next move.

climbing shoemaker, with the E side of sonielem ridge behind

nearing the summit of shoemaker, with S glacier peak behind and N glacier in the distance

Despite our gorgeous setting and the nice weather, we were both feeling rather uninterested and unsure of what to ski next.  Lots of recent wet slide debris on and below most runs and the blazing hot sun already having cooked E and S aspects left us with limited options.  We lazily decided to start up the garden wall couloir.  Mid-way up with very firm conditions in the shade, we decided to bail, not wanting to wait for the sun.  We skied down towards picture lake til we found access to running water.  In a huge departure from our usual style, we spent a solid 30+ minutes sitting around BSing and refilling bottles. 

sonielem ridge dominates the view looking west from atop shoemaker

Both in agreement that our stoke and motivation just wasn’t happening today for whatever reason, we decided to bail and make it back to town by dinner time.  Our egress took longer than expected, due in part to our decision to skin around the N side of lucifer lake, due to the amount of open water on the eastern shore that we hadn’t seen in the morning.  Even from the outlet of lucifer it took us nearly 3 hours to get down to the car.  Despite our funky mood and only skiing 1.3 runs, it was a beautiful day out in the rugged mission mountains. 

N and S glacier peaks from lucifer lake

About 6k vertical in 12 hours car-car

Rose: incredible views of the mission range atop mt. shoemaker

Thorn: weird, apathetic mood

Bud: returning for a ESM to lucifer lake traverse

Thoughts: while there is a tremendous amount of good ski terrain around lucifer and picture lakes, the approach is more challenging than the riddell lakes trail, ESM trail or ashley creek in my opinion.  Next time I would do a traverse from ESM to or from lucifer so that you only have to cover that approach/egress once in the day rather than twice.