Green Mountain — Thursday, May. 1, 2025

Ski tour to Green Mt today.  Our party of 3 only ones on the mountain. Suiattle River Rd not bad.  Potholes once pavement ends, but fairly easy to navigate around or through slowly.  Gravel road up to TH pretty smooth.   Trail clear until about 5000 ft with patchy snow, we transitioned to skins about 5100 ft.  Traveled up middle-looker's left of basin below the lookout, booted up the last 4th. Saw tracks following the summer trail going right and presumably up the looker's right ridge line.  Large cornices and steep drop off along SW ridge but easy to avoid.  Spent a few minutes on the lookout deck (what a spot! Glacier Peak! Mt. Baker!) then started ski back down.  Upon cutting across the top of the bowl S of the lookout I set off a series of D2 wet loose avalanches that ran the entirety of the bowl.  I was able to ski out (the continued skiing out is what kept setting off more wet loose) until the slope angle lessened, then our party carefully picked our way down.  It was nerve-wracking and unexpected.  Snow sun-softened but only a handful of small rollers on the way up that did not propagate at all  In retrospect, boots sinking well above ankle on the final walk-up should have been our clue.  Falsely expecting stable spring conditions.  Looks like you could maybe link snow to ski from 4800 to intersect with trail below, but we'd had enough adventure so passed on trying.  Absolutely gorgeous area, and grateful we came out with some good lessons learned.