If you're backcountry skiing in the Inland Northwest you know there are a few human powered staples you have to tick off the list. For my buddy and I, after last week's fresh powder, we decided to scope a well documented, but new to us area: Rabbit Gulch. Rabbit Gulch is one of the most accessible backcountry touring areas from the Spokane and Coeur d'Alene region. It's about a 1.5 hour drive and usually has a well established skin track - so if you're looking for solitude, don't expect it. In our 6 hours in the mountains, there was plenty of braps from one of the many sled crews that were out that day taking advantage of the bluebird conditions.
For us, we chose to ski on the Sunday Daylight Savings Time went into effect, so I picked up my friend and we left Spokane around 8 am. A quick 1.5 hour drive led us to the Burke Canyon, just outside of Wallace, and surrounded by abandoned mines and equipment. If you've always stuck to the main roads in the Idaho Panhandle, this canyon feels somewhat ghost towny and an artifact of the once prosperous region it was. You wind down this road for 8 or so miles passing a few of the locally famous backcountry touring spots and find yourself at an electrical substation with a parking lot adjacent.
We found the parking situation incredibly easy: drive to the end of the road and park in the lot. The lot was snowy and half full of snowmobilers tinkering with their sleds and getting ready to rip the day. As we skinned out, they slowly funneled out of the lot and began ripping up the power line clear cut. We took the road and hung on the side on a skin track set the day before.
Watching a splitboarder hit hills while in ski mode is fun - he'll hate me for it, but he was too in the backseat and tumbled a few times on some downhill glides.
The full approach was an easy one-ish miles up the forest road, we merged onto the trail under the power lines and after about a tenth of mile, realized we needed to double back and head down the trail we missed on the left.
Crossed the bridge full of some tasty looking mushrooms and hit the forest road. Temperature was warming and in our hasty pits we saw the snow starting to clump but not slab.
Right before we turned uphill through the trees, we noticed a natural slide that occurred just off Tiger peak. A survey looked like a hidden rock feature had been the point of release and the runout was limited. The slide occurred on a direct eastern aspect that had received quite a bit of sun through the morning - based on FatMaps the slide was at about 6300 feet in elevation and confirmed some sort of terrain feature that originated the slide. No other signs of slides on the whole trip.
We then left the forest road and climb and began climbing through loose trees on that same skin track from the day before, but at times left it for a faint skin track left from by friends who attacked Rabbit Gulch Thursday. Theirs was mostly covered by Friday's storm and we found their track more friendly. Overall easy skinning and we welcomed a slight breeze from the east as the climb steepened ever so slightly. We entered the trees toward the bowl we were looking to ski and the skinning through the denser forest was easy.
Upon reaching the bowl, the sun was almost directly overhead thanks to daylight savings time. As we climbed the 500 feet in the bowl it got sunny. Too sunny. I was sweating like crazy and triple applied sunscreen. This was further impacted as the western facing aspect of the bowl meant we were fully sheltered from the wind.
The skier from the day before laid down some beautiful inviting turns, but we opted to continue up and scout the ridge to take a peek into Montana. After gaining the ridge, we navigated quickly through the trees on top of the ridge to take a peek at Montana side of Burke and scout the Blossom Lake bowl. The terrain looked killer and steep. Snowmobilers had ripped up the lakes and most of the visible peaks. We determined it was for another day to drop the backside for a turn.
Skinned through the trees across the ridge line until we got to the clearing on the western aspect up top. We wanted to peek the Southern / Southwestern aspect and scout for a future trip, but the powder called and we were anxious to take a few turns on the lower glade.
We broke the trees in sight of some larger sastrugi features on the summit. Took lunch on the transition and absorbed the sights. After our transition, the first turn was some windblown crust for the first turn, then we scored some champagne powder on the next few turns on this short descent.
Pulled out the map to choose the best route down through the trees and back to that sacred single touched bowl we skinned up earlier in the day. The trees were spaced comfortably and provided protection from the bluebird sun - needless to say, that untouched powder in the trees was very nice.
We broke into the glade we climbed earlier and took turns carving in some high quality PNW powder. Upon reaching the bottom, we decided the snow was so good we'd opt for a second lap on the lower bowl. Conditions on the uphill were pure spring skiing so we busted out the skin wax for the first day of the year and started back up.
We made quick work of the 500 or so feet of gain and laid down tracks 4 and 5 of this run. There was plenty more room for sessioning the run and getting fresh turns over and over. Maybe next time, I was pretty cooked from the scouting we did.
We continued out with tree survival skiing on the way out. Up, down, around and through the tighter lower trees. We ended up cutting a few of the switch backs o the roads through the steeper embankments - sometimes getting creative as there weren't always obvious lines to take through the underbrush. In fact, I ended up devouring a short tree and had a bit of a time untangling my skis from under the hefty sun baked heavy snow.
After crossing the bridge over the creek, my splitboarder friend and I boot packed a bit and blew up the skin track due to post holing to our hip. We must have taken the wrong path out, the other beta on Strava, Gaia, and fat maps seems they may take the forest just north of the main trail in. I convinced him to take the power line clear cut, which proved to be difficult for him to navigate. So we took to the washboarded forest road all the way out. I guess it was soft knees and full hearts back to the car.
All in all, it was about 7.5 miles. 3.2k elevation gain and a great day in some untouched powder. If you're looking for a great backcountry tour in Spokane for the mellow avalanche prone days, Rabbit Gulch is it!