EPiC

We decided to change the name, but went to the same place today. More creeks, glades, and chutes on this shady hillside than you can do in a day. Challenging skinning and navigation around scree, but man...is it worth it! (...yes)

The area's now officially EPiC. No, that's not the overused term but a code of sorts that fits this area well.  Longest runs we've found by far (for here that is...1200 vert).  More lichen and moss on these trees than anywhere I've seen in this area.  Each 'run' or chute we'll name by their number, left to right, 'merican style. We skied ep7c yesterday, and ep3c today (i think, still haven't named all the runs).

Saw a snowshoe hare bound across the snow 20 feet in front of me, saw the tracks left by a hucking squirrel (the picture didn't do it justice, but this dude did a sweet 'bridge' ride on a skinny down snag and hucked several feet off the end to cross the creek),  saw nobody but us Pilots skiing some cold snow in these thar hills a half hour from our houses.  YWLH!

Thankfully Hayride broke trail all day today even after having a full Abyss by himself last night...!  Nice work.

Looking west towards 007 peak (photos of me are by Hayride. Yes, I also now have a red puff jacket to better spot me).

Nice turn, the speck up there is me.

"SS" is for singlespeed!

This is a cool shot, and it looks like a huge steep hill, but it's really pretty small and mellow, but we've been looking at this thing from the parking area for years and finally did it today! 

Skywalker in the far distance...

me, grasping for air...

Me heading down the "powerline"

101 switchbacks

 Finally snowed the last couple of days, after a couple of weeks of sunny and warm weather.  The mountain was calling 8" yesterday and 6" in the last 24 this morning...but I'm calling shenanigans. That makes it sound like there's 14" total in the last 2 days but there's overlap in their numbers. There was maybe 8" total up at 10,500ft at the tunnel.  Hayride and I got out for a relatively quick tour up the north side to the Whaleback area that I last found on my birthday over a month ago.  This area rocks!

After about 101 switchbacks, we gained about 1100ft vertical in two hours.  It was a really challenging skin with no easy way up...classic bushwhacking, just breaking trail zig-zagging all the way up.  But we found a sweet number of skinny alleys to ski with good snow and a base.  

Quick turning was the call here, kept us on our toes. Twas rad to again find a "new" ski spot that's a little bit steeper than our normal stuff and completely north facing and devoid of humans.  Nobody wants to make the zigzags up the hill I guess. 

Woodlay with the Pilot

 First time skiing this season with the Pilot! Good to see him and catch up after a 6 week over-the-pond-cyclocross-extravaganza for him and some other fellow pilots to race against the Euros culminating at Master's World ChampionshipsHe's finally back for some touring and powder turns. 

 Back up to Woodlay Mtn for some shadyslope turns.  This area has the only somewhat protected aspect and slopes from the gale-force winds that I can find these days.  It's insane really the difference between the winds this year and last.  Granted, we're well above average snowfall this year but the winds are making most stuff a total mess. 

 The winds were so bad the night before last that I got stuck in our plow truck on the driveway trying to get out to meet up with the Pilot.  The winds had drifted all the snow off the nearby hillside down onto the driveway and created a near solid block of snow.  The big diesel truck just got stopped dead in its tracks.  My wife said I looked like a crazed gopher flinging up snow in the truck trying to get out.  It'd be funny (for me) if I weren't on a schedule to meet up with him and get skiing! After a half-hour i was finally out, but not after getting the tractor out and digging the truck out, piling the snow 10 feet high at this one spot.  I buried my backup avy shovel along the way...that'll be there in springtime no doubt.

 I've been to this particular hill for the last 6 weeks and it has not disappointed yet.  A haul to get in and out, but it's very worth it (8 miles round trip with 2 great runs). Harder than normal powder today but still knee deep. 

Pure hell

Hayride was spot on when he said last night, "Hell is not hot, it's really F'ing windy and cold."

Describing last night's Dark Patrol is a lost cause. 'Siberia in a windy snowstorm' only gives a hint of what it was like.  With over a foot of snow in the last few days we just had to try out another night up at Ptarmagin Hill and as we drove up it just got windier and windier, pure white-out conditions.  'It'd be fine once we got in the trees' we thought...

Not so.

Two good turns in two hours; no skin exposed to the -5 temps and 60mph gusts making a lovely -40 windchill; couldn't see where we were going up OR down; glad to have the GPS since skin tracks were covered almost immediately after making them; Goggles just protected our eyes from the pelting snow granules but did nothing for sight; we skied away with our tails between our legs; getting back to the car filled with snow from it getting forced through the cracks in the tailgate; only to get stuck high-centered in a wind-drift 100 yards later and spend a half-hour digging out to make it back to Ned where it was hardly windy. Yep...it was awesome.

Deep Patrol

Headed out Sunday with the usual suspects and up to Woodlay, for the third Sunday in a row. This place is my new favorite place, except for the fact that it's uphill both ways.

1 mile in, 4 to go. The dark spot in the left lower of the picture is sadly a scratch in my lens.  It's been dropped in the snow and on the ground by mistake too, but not sure when that scratch occurred.  It's been a great camera, the lens is amazing and the zoom huge! But this scratch bums me out! (It's a Panasonic Lumix 14 megapixel, 8x zoom.)

It's snowed a lot for these parts in the last week.  Overnight, since last night's dark patrol, we got another 4-5" bringing snow totals up to somewhere around 15". 

 Breaking trail a bunch today. Nobody had been up to Woodlay Lake today, and any tracks from yesterday were 5" under the new snow.  We were all pretty worked from the travel except for perhaps Powers, who is not only fitter than Hayride and myself, but didn't have to break as much trail since she would've gotten us lost if she had (she'd never been up here before)!

Hayride in the fluff...knee deep, hip deep in places!

Powers follows down the first run.

The second run's turns

The valley before the up. It's all flat for the most part, before this view.  The glades we skied are on the left side of the valley.

Dark Patrols

Hayride skinning up about 5:30pm, with a sliver of a moon hanging above the trees.

Doing some catchup on the blog here...got so much snow in the last few days that I'm shoveling, skiing, mucking and everything OTHER than writing! 

 Hayride and I got out for a dusk patrol that turned dark on Thursday on the skinny skis.  It had just snowed 3" and for some reason the snow was super fast.  We picked the right wax somehow and never put on skis for the 800ft vertical up to the hut from the parking area.  I have to agree with Hayride on this one: Skinny skis with the right kick wax on rolling terrain is the closest thing to mountain biking singletrack on skis.

Saturday night we headed out for a Dark Patrol ski at Ptarmagin Hill.  It had snowed all day and there was no wind somehow.  So after all else had left the hill, we headed up for boot deep powder in the dark.  Headlamps on even before we got to the top of the 1st run, they definitely were needed as the moon was most definitely NOT full.  All the tracks from the day's skiers were covered already and I'd estimate about 10" of new snow had fallen so far.  We just HAD to do another half-run after the 1st because those were the best turns of the year.  The effortless floating of turns through powder with the snow flying up into your crotch area at each turn...well...it's just good...and it's even better in the dark.

Februray cold spell and our resident mooses

Last week we had near record warm temperatures, and in the last three days we've seen record cold.  I XC skied Monday dusk patrol in -3 and used Polar wax for the first time ever (it works great!).  But since then, the temps have gone even further down.  The high yesterday was negative 3 and last night we hit: 

We have had 4 resident moose at the ranch the last three mornings. It seems to be an entire family - two offspring (one male, one female), and the parents.  They have been totally happy here feeding on the willows and aspen shoots in the back meadow, then heading a bit uphill to nap on and off during the day. The horses are very curious about them, and the young male is very curious about the horses too.

The two male moose, the bull on the left and the up-and-coming-bull on the right.

The young male checks out the ponies

Lily, Snapdragon, and Chloe check out the mooses from afar