Backcountry Ski/Snowboard - Rampart Ridge

The Gold Creek sno-park appeared to have not been plowed at all since my trip on  1/22.

Even with AWD, good clearance and snow tires attempting to drive the road seemed  very prone to getting stuck.   Having no desire to spend time digging out stuck cars -- we choose to ski Silver Peak instead. 

We parked in the E2 Lot at Hyak (the free lot closest to Exit 54)  and followed the blye diamond marked trail to Nordic Pass.     We had the typicall trouble finding the blue diamonds again after crossing the big power lines through the Summit Nordic area,  but made it to Nordic Pass OK.

From there we dropped to windy pass with skins on and skinned up the southern edge of the clearcut and then North and west through old forest to enter the north basin.   We skinned up the north basin to 5000 feet elevation -- which is where the slope steepens and we needed to  carefully condsider avalanche hazard.    We choose to rip skins and ski down the basin 500 vft and skin back up for a repeat lap.    There was a supportive crust with 2-3 inches of soft snow.   The skiing did not suck too much.      We skied west through the old trees to find the nordic trails and followed them to Grand Junction to return to the trailhead via the Nordic trail descent route. 

In retrospect for touring to Silver Peak -- it would be more efficient to obtain a free "Uphill travel pass" from the Summit, park at Silver Fir and tour up the designated uphill route , following the downhill run "Outback" and Nordic trail "White Rabbit" to reach "Grand Junction"  and follow the "Ripsaw" nordic trail to reach the Ollalie Meadows area instead of using the "Nordic Pass trail"