Jon's first time out since last fall's heavy damage to the wing.
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Jon, Allen, and Shawn skinning up at HRM for departure
Jon's first time out since last fall's heavy damage to the wing. |
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We skinned up the Heather Canyon runnout and gained the ridge pretty quickly.
Only issue - the snow on the west aspect of Pea Gravel ridge was so wind-
hammered that we had to convert over to boot packing. Not a usual action in
mid-Feb.
Shawn suiting up to build the staircase. Luckily he was in a staircase- building mood and we all made steady progress to the top of the ridge. |
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A couple of days prior some explosive work by the Meadows ski patrol had
triggered this giant avalanche below A-Zone in upper Heather Canyon. The
crown was in the 4-5 foot range and the debris ran for a looooong way down
the drainage. Pretty chubby.
Note the smaller fracture line in foreground above Accordion Bowl (still a two-footer and not small by any means). Definitely one of the bigger slides I've ever seen in Heather Canyon. |
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| Shawn, Allen (ahead) and Jon continuing on up Pea-Gravel Ridge to the meatier snow and terrain. |
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Jon's trying to remember how to work his skis -
Having gained the second knuckle, we decided the skiing was going to be pretty good and prepared to drop in. You can see the ridge we climbed in the background behind Jon. This whole area had been pretty wind-hammered. Eval work was definitely not too intimidating so we jumped on in. |
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| Allen prepping to ski the chalk in the upper canyon. The skiing on the lee side of this nub was actually pretty sweet. |
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Jon eyeing the yummy chutes below Lamberson Butte before
dropping into our line.
For being out of action as long as he's been, Jon was definitely was the hero of the day considering the non-trivial march out of the canyon that followed. |
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| . . . and he rapidly assumes "dot" status as he drops the 1000+ vertical feet into the canyon |
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| After some absurdly tedious sideslip-filled traversing we finally made our way out of the canyon and suited up for a drop into the East aspect of Heather Canyon proper and back to the beer . . . 'erh, vehicles. |
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| Shawn getting some nice turns in the East aspect of Upper Heather. |
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| Shawn, Jon, and Allen making their way into Heather Canyon, Warren Miller- style. |
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Shawn decided to jettison a ski in the top part of Heather just to keep things
spicy. It plummeted the nearly 800 feet to the base of the waterfall feature
on this aspect of the canyon.
You can see Shawn (mid-right photo) starting to negotiate the downclimb sans-a-ski. |
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"The debris pile"
Jon looks on as Shawn loses some serious style points for parking (now) both skis in the bottom of the drainage. As that first ski was whizzing down, I thought all the while that his stick was going to go down the plug-hole at the bottom of that waterfall for sure. |
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Since Jon had drained his Camelback - he figured he'd start stockpiling fluids
in his foot.
After the cruise to the car, Jon juggles his beer to demo his pasty-white instep with the new silver dollar bubble feature. |
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