yes.
Bring Bring. tRoy called and Tuesday we met up with Anna from Montana for hike in the bowl. Prior to that, the snow in town was down to shade shake ice, but up on the hill after a night of storming, about a foot of freshies layed smooth on the slopes. We made it up in record time, climbing that fuck-nut ridgeline, in a bout an hour. Anna, who we met up with at the bottom was pretty stout on the way up on a wide set of tele’s.
We hike over to the bowl side and after a bit of scoping, decided to drop in on Upper lightening or whatever they call it. We scanned and discussed the options for about a half hour or so. Our main concern was the lack of any base. It was essentially 1 to 4 feet of light powder on top of rock. We carried no avi gear that day and we were the only tracks in that area. And the snow was juicy. We couldn’t resist. We had the option of a wide open bowl or some trees. We opted for the sheltered lines of the trees and it was a good chioce. I had the honor of dropping in first this time and from the word go, my board disapeared. That’s a weird experience. I carved one moderate turn in a blind float and bottomed out cracking a gouge on a rock or root. Lesson learned, the rest of my turns were nice and mellow. Just enough to stay up off the reef.
We dropped in on catwalk cords and the last few moments were fairly magical for my noviceness. I’ve never really skied anything other than cords and bumps my whole life. Other than last winter in the IB anyway. So that top session was tits. Full on. Anna and ya dropped in on the cords because they too, even being cords, were the best I had seen in a while. While Anna sped away dropping knees, I curved it up a bit, then regrouped with tRoy and hit a natural pipe and some edgy powza down the way. It was top notch. There were reports of avilanches in the area we skied later that day. They say that it’s more common for slides to happen in 24 hours from the snow fall. Good to know.
There’s an avalanche education happening with some peaks avalanche club. I was considering going until I found out that it cost $240 bucks. I wont be able to pay that. I guess I’ll just have to risk having the rescue service spend $10,000 pulling me, or my dead body out of the snow.
The Old Pueblo is this weekend and I’m going to miss it. That is weird and so is this.
Life’s a Trip.