CCC Road: Blowout Creek Trailhead, Moolock Mountain — Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021

kidzwonthike and I summited Moolock today starting from the CCC Blowout Trail. While we summited, I am more thankful of anything else that we got back to the trailhead safely and in one piece.

Today was honestly a Type 2.5 day where I made some really stupid mistakes/judgment calls which could have resulted in serious injury or death, dealing with avalanche conditions.

Route Taken

We walked up the Blowout Creek Trailhead starting from Oxbow Trail. At the CCC trail intersection, we turned left, crossed the creek over the wobbly log, walked a bit further down the CCC trail, then turned right and went towards the unofficial mountain bike trail system.

The traverse to the start of the trail system was flattish with some minor stream crossings, but I definitely wish we had brought loppers: a lot of eye height slide alder and thistle berry bush branches were whapping us in the face, which made for an unpleasant walk in/out; it felt like I was in a production of “50 shades of slide alder” (not my kink).

We got to a section of forest that we thought was the right fork of the trail and started ascending.. huh? Where in the hell was the trail?! After about 750’ of bushwhacking over roots, limbs, and wet ferns, we decided to head over to the trail after crossing the stream. After some poking around we found what looked like a trail, and started following it up.

The trail is pretty cool for foot traffic, but probably should only be done by Evil Kenevils on bikes (so many jumps and sharp corners 😂). The switchbacks were tight, but no worse than Putrid Pete’s Peak in the forested section.

At the second road intersection was where we put our snowshoes on (cause, why not?) and pushed up the ridge to the next road switchback.

Once we got above treeline (or at least the non-logged area?), the snowpack deepened considerably: we were looking at snow drifts at least 3’ in between large boulders which hadn’t been fully filled in (not so fun when we found holes or tripped). Once we got up on the road it got easier (a simple flat walk on less deep ground). We were still pushing a lot of fresh powder, but it wasn’t as deep, and it hadn’t sluffed enough that I was worried about walking on the outer edges (near the wind-loaded berm).

We walked up the road towards the high point between Bootalicous and Moolock. Our goal was to try walking it, since we were concerned about traveling up or across exposed avalanche prone slopes; some of the slope angles unloaded were way over 35 degrees, so they were likely well over 35 degrees loaded with snow. The ridge had a ton of obstructions though: tight tree cover, icy/exposed boulders, and sheer drop offs along a knife edge ridge between trees. So, we had to do a lot of sidehilling over unstable snowpack to bypass the obstructions. To mitigate issues I compressed the soft snow to create a walkway we could both used that stayed as level as possible, switchbacking up when needed, using tree cover for protection.

This didn’t work out though in the end and we had to drop down a couple hundred feet and go along an exposed section by a partly covered boulder field to the saddle, dodging tree wells in the process. We descended one at a time and avoided overlapping in switchbacks because there was a storm slab layer that was incredibly reactive and prone to sliding; I triggered several D1 avalanches easily with my snowshoes by cutting at the right angle in/near terrain we disturbed. One of the sections was where I triggered a 2’ by 2’ storm slab which broke cleanly over the layer directly below it. I panicked and warned kidzwonthike, but was thankful that the slab stopped sliding due to tree cover and didn’t entrain more snow to create a larger slab avalanche.

Once we got over to the saddle, I counted my lucky stars and said “eff this, I never want to come back here”, so I pushed up towards the false summit, then traversed the tight ridge to the true summit. Had to hop over some trees and boulders, like I did going from Thompson to Revolution, but at least this section was sheltered from avalanche risk. Once we got to the final open area, I snaked in between boulders along the ridge line (which was less snow covered due to wind scouring), then said “yippeee kai yayyyy mother…” (insert rest of phrase here from Die Hard).

I was getting blasted with wind fetch in the side of the face going 10mph+, but I was happy I never had to come back here (for this mountain at least 🤣).

The way down we went one at a time and I tried to carefully cut a low angle track in the boulder field around partly snow covered boulders. We took the road back to our down track and walked out in the dark, talking about documentaries and other stuff, taking the “trail” down instead of going over wet ferns 🤪. So. Many. Bike. Jumps.

Please see kidzwonthike’s trip report for the rest of the story.. I’m sure his perspective is quite different from mine 😅.

Road Conditions

Trace snow on the side of the road on the way in, but trace snow collecting on the road itself on the way out; the temperatures were around freezing, so the snow was slushy, but sticking (I drove carefully on the way out).

Snow Conditions

There were lots of instability/avalanche concerns out on the mountain today. Please read my NWAC observation (linked) if you want more gory details about what I saw.

Be very careful if venturing out in deeper snowpack in the near future around Snoqualmie Pass/Stevens Pass, as the issues of concern weren't brought up in the main 12/13~12/14 daily NWAC report (they were in the more detailed section as a footnote) and the issue will likely continue to be of concern for some time.

More Information on this Trip Report

• https://nwac.us/public-obs/8570/
• https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=1821166