Loser Ridge (attempted)

Bruno, Jeff, and I parked in the Price Creek rest area and headed NW to Keechelus Lake. We crossed on the dam then headed for the Meadow Creek road (road 5483). On Meadow Creek road, about a hundred feet after we passed under the power lines, we headed north off of the road and went cross-country up Loser Ridge (who named this ridge?).

Loser Ridge is populated by young trees that are spaced out enough that we got wet when pushing wet boughs out of our way, but didn't feel like we were bushwacking. We made our way to 4,400' on the ridge via a mixture of logging roads and cross-country travel. At this point I continued on to tag the false summit of the ridge.

The upper part of the ridge has a wonderful, open bowl that would be fun to yoyo -- assuming the snowmobiles aren't around. We only saw four (it was a Friday), but there were loads of tracks from previous weekends.

Since it was raining, we headed right back down the ridge (a nice run) to the network of logging roads that eventually meet Road 5483. The ski down the logging roads to road 5483 was very fun even though the snow was soggy crud. It was a slog from 5483 to the parking area.

In better weather, a loop trip to Loser Ridge and Roaring Ridge would make a fun ski trip.

Date:

2007/03/23

Elevation gain:

2,210 feet

Trip type:

back country ski

USGS quads:

Stampede Pass, Lost Lake

Car-to-car:

6 hours 11 minutes

3 hours 39 minutes ascending from eastbound Price Creek rest area to false summit of Loser Ridge
2 hours 32 minutes descending from false summit of Loser Ridge to eastbound Price Creek rest area
51 minutes driving back from eastbound Price Creek rest area to TNAB rendezvous point

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