2/2/02
| Early light on the mountain as we gear up |
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Started skinning under the lost city of snow-caves at about 7:30. We were about 20 yards from the Timberline lot; the large group of cave dwellers were beginning to emerge - probably a group of boy scouts or something out for an overnighter. We were going to stick around the Salmon River drainage and give Tom his first taste of skinning and backcountry skiing.
| Tom on a walk above the lot |
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The snow was in great shape and the weather perfect - sun shining and not a breath of wind. After about 400 feet of climbing we stopped to do some eval work and beacon drills. We couldn't find any really easy shears and a Rutschblock score of 5 on a crummy failure, at best, so we were feeling pretty good about the snowpack.
| Discussing the finer points of hole-diggin' |
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| "So it's always this good, right?" |
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The original intent was a mellow ski of the terrain in the Salmon River drainage, but from about the 6500 foot level we had a pretty good look down into the lower western aspect of the White River Canyon . . . all of the terrain looked really good. Angled east and had a closer look over into the canyon. The knoll that we were on rolled over and made seeing the entire line difficult, but an aesthetic and obvious line presented itself a little below us. We made the quick ski to the top of it and dug another hole - things still checked out.
From this new vantage we could see that the pitch that we had just been standing on top of was, in fact, even more sustained than the one we were about to dive into. Plans for the rest of the morning began to coalesce - hit this pitch - scoot out and hit the one we were eyeballing - and then see how we felt about a third lap.
Tom must have had the first-time-out karma dialed in pretty high because the turns were outstanding.
| Tom dives into lap one. |
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| A bad case of involuntary perma-grin |
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| Matt gettin' sum |
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| Talking it over after lap one |
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The truly aggressive strait-line skin track out of the bottom wasn't agreeing with Tom's snake-skins, so we started building some switchbacks up the slope. We regrouped at the top and queued-up for round two. Matt hopped in and proceeded to make many, many turns, and become very, very small.
| Matt starts into lap 2 - lap one tracks in the background |
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| . . . a few dozen more . . . |
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Tom followed and I finished up . . . the pitch was really great and actually rolled over in the last 20-30 turns to closer to 40 degrees.
| Tom making turns just above the rollover |
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| Quick post-run inspection of tracks on the last rollover |
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Matt threw in a few traverses to meet up with our original up-track, and soon we were ready for round three.
| Tom punching in on the uptrack - 1st lap turns in the background |
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The sun was beginning to work the snow on this southeast aspect, so we wanted to get it before it got out of shape. It was still a fully satisfying carbon-copy of the last run.
| Tom painting some 8's |
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| Matt layin 'em down on the last pitch |
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Our now-finely-tuned skintrack permitted a fairly easy exit from the canyon, though we were all gassed.
| Final look back at our work |
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Except for a couple of x-country skiers on the canyon's central moraine, we were all sort of shocked to have not seen other enthusiasts on a busy Saturday. Made the embarrassingly quick ski back to the lot spent some time watching lenticular clouds stacking off the summit.
| Parting shot |
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