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.