Sunday, March 28, 2010

Prospecting Pow with Pilots

None of us thought it would be like that. It was that good. After drinks with Timmy and Heyride at the Pighouse last night for his upcoming b-day I was unsure how good I'd feel today, but whenever there are skis on my feet and pow in the forecast I need little more motivation.

What a great way to end March, inundating myself in skiing as much pow as possible, while the getting was good. Day 6 on skis in the last 9, with nearly 16,000ft accumulated vertical doesn't even register compared to Greg Hill's journey but it's a good weeks work for me. (If I only didn't need a job!) With almost 3 feet of new snow since last Saturday, and the winds returning last night and picking up all that snow that fell on the high peaks and placing it into the little catch areas, like Prospector Gullys, I had a feeling it'd be pretty OK. Yesterday's tour to 4mile was excellent, but today's was truly insane.

The Pilot, Dubba, Heyride and me all met up at the tunnel at a nearly dawn patrol time of 7am for a 4 hour tour. Sunrise was getting obscured by the blowing snow in the parking lot, so we zipped up and headed for the safety of the trees. After an almost two hour skin up to the top, we got 3 amazing runs in what were the best turns of the year up there. Knee deep pow, straight-lining, face-shots, and just throwing ourselves around in the snow without a worry in the world. Like Dubba said, "if we had done this in the off-season while racing (bikes) full-time, we would've lasted much longer!" Yep!

The below video was inspired by Hot Dog - the Movie. I was only 11 years old when that movie came out and I remember watching it and learning all the goofy lines like it was just last year. A Classic. A larger version viewable in HQ is here.

1 comment:

KB said...

You know that air that's whipping in our faces - it's YOUR fault. You mentioned its absence so, of course, it had to return! Even coding it by spelling it doesn't trick it into staying away.

I'm riding on the road a little today, and I'll be THANKING you (actually, I will be very thankful, even if the wind is throwing sand in my face).

We were guessing that there was high avi danger this weekend. As we snowshoed near our house, we had a couple of scary loud "whoomphs", as large sections of snow collapsed a few inches below us. Of course, we weren't in avi territory but we wondered about what it was like up high. Glad you're safe.