Cone Peak, Redux: South Peak and the Northeast Bowl

Cone peak has become my go-to for weekend ski tours. While the runs are short, so is the drive and the approach. Plus, there are a ton of skiable aspects on Cone and its neighboring peaks. Plenty to keep you busy for a day. This post combines two different tours to South Peak and the NE bowl on Cone.

2/5/13- South Peak: Matt and I left Eugene in the early morning and headed up to Tombstone Pass. The snow was firm, and we reached the base of the Cone well before the sun had gone to wor. We decided to traverse below the cone to the ridge that connects Cone Peak to South Peak. Half an hour later, we were on top of South Peak. South Peak offers a relatively long, loosely treed, West facing bowl. Theoretically one could ski the bowl all the way to the road. On that day, Matt and I decided to link South Peak with a descent of Cone Peak. 

By the time we summited South Peak, the sun started to work on softening the snow. We waited on the summit for a short while before deciding start skiing. However, the West facing aspect of the bowl was still pretty firm since it hadn't gotten as much sun. We decided to cut our descent short and traverse back to the ridge so that we didn't have as much hiking to do to get back to Cone. If you're trying to incorporate South Peak in a trip to Cone, it may be worth saving it until the end of the day when the sun has softened up that West facing bowl. Then again, if you're hitting it on a good snow day, it probably doesn't matter!

3/9/13--NE Bowl of Cone Peak: We left Eugene with a big crew: Matt, Gordon, Jake and Jared were all on board for this one. As is typical with Cone Peak, the south facing aspects were quite firm on the ascent. Above the trees, they were so firm that many of us threw our skis on our packs and booted the cone to the summit. While the South facing aspect of Cone was still bulletproof, the NE bowl was feeling surprisingly soft. It a had snowed a few days before, but I was surprised to find any of the new snow preserved.  Temps were rising quickly and we realized the snow was only a short time away from becoming isothermic--if we wanted to get some powder turns in, that was our chance.

We dropped in to the NE bowl from the summit. The snow seemed fairly stable, and I ski cut right across the top of the bowl. The snow got progressively better as we got off the summit. We skied down to end of the bowl, and the end of the line. The NE bowl empties onto a cliff band that we didn't take too much time exploring. I would guess that there are ways to get around the cliffs and keep going. But it seems coming back up would be a pain, and you would be so low in elevation the likelyhood of finding good snow below the cliffs is pretty low. Our group opted to skin back up to the summit and make one more lap while the snow was good. We finished with the standard descent down Cone, and we headed home.