It was actually quite cold when we arrived at the trail head. We started skiinning at 10 a.m. knowing that things wouldn't warm up, if at all, until much later in the day. But temperatures rose quickly and it was over 40 by noon. The snow pack was changing before our eyes - much to our excitement. Coverage on the flume slide looked good, and it is a long slide, so we were hoping for a great run.
The problem proved to be finding the slide. The Flume Slide Trail seemed to run straight into the slide on the maps we looked at before departing. And the trail markers referred to the distance to the "base" of the slide. But as we followed along with our GPS during the lengthy skin (3.5 plus miles to the base from the parking lot), it became clear we were veering too far to the looker's right. We tried to bush whack to the left, but the terrain became to steep to skin and we were post holing pretty severely. Around 2:30, anticipating a lengthy trip back out the car, we turned around without setting foot on the slide.
Great day to be outside. Not a great day for turns. Worth the try though, and having discovered the Cal Topo website since our endeavour, we are now confident we can identify the proper drainage to follow off of the Mt. Flume Slide Trail. An open question remains as to whether snow shoes will be necessary to reach the base of the slide when the terrain becomes too steep to skin (but too far away from the slide to justify boot packing).
Enjoy the pictures!
One of many stream crossings on the Flume Slide Trail.
Don't believe everything you read. The Flume Slide Trail does not lead to the base of the Flume Slide.
Another, more advanced crossing.
We took a more direct descent back to the Flume Gorge hiking trail instead of cutting all the way over to the Liberty Spring Trail that we came in on. Flume Gorge looked pretty cool.
We were really close to the slide!
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