I grabbed my first pair of homebuilt skis Matt had a borrowed pair of Tuas.
We started out from the car booting across the bench towards snow lake. Where we got our first glimpse of the peak.
Having not been to unicorn before we did not realize that we chose the wrong boot track. As we climbed the ridge we were able to see down to snow lake, where we should have been. Not wanting to go back down, we continued up towards Foss Peak untill we were high above the cliff band
Matt slapping on the planks.
From here we pulled a ski-for-your-life traverse across the hanging snow field between Foss peak and the cliffs below. In retrospect this probably wasn't the smartest move but, hey, we're still alive.
We skied down into the upper basin below Unicorn peak were I strapped on my skins and skinned up to the bottom of the col leading up to the Unicorn saddle. We continued booting up the col and finally up the peak itself.
The horn looking back at Tahoma
We dropped our packs and scrambled up the horn to get the full panoramic view. Rainier, Adams, Hood, and St. Helens. Although not in the picture, we could see that the traverse from The Castle is still open though the south east facing slope onto the unicorn glacier had a lot of debris on it.
The scramble to the top
And the view
We ran back to our skis to start enjoying the corn. My skis performed great and the snow was perfect. The super soft tails made me feel a little wobbly but the width and low sidecut kept things fun.
We skied both cols and then quickly skinned back to the car. All-in-all a great day.
