two days of backcountry skiing in our own local 'paradise bowls'. friday saw the first significant snowfall we've had in the northern mountains in about 3 weeks. the plan was to get out the door by 7 on sat. a.m. and be skinning by 8:30 or so. i got up at 6 and immediately asked myself "what was i thinking?" when i decided to stay out drinking until 2 a.m. i guess it was the company that i was keeping that had a lot to do with that. at any rate, my ass was dragging but at least i wasn't driving and could sip on gatorade on the way to the mount-ins.
we decided to make the adventure back into paradise becuase it looked like no one had been back there for a spell. we were right. we had the fresh lines all to ourselves. i was tired as hell but the conditions and the snow were so excellent that i was motivated to climb over and over again to get in some turns. it was good that we had 3 folks who shared the trailbreaking. it was fairly warm out, but we took the opportunity to stop by the shanty (yes, the infamous bootlegged/squatter shanty on national forest property) to take a break out of the slight breeze. i've never seen it this buried ... if you didn't know it was there you could probably walk right over the top of it. oh purdy good.
it kind of snowed off and on throughout the day and picked up a little bit as we drove back to town. that turned out to be a good thing. made the mistake of going to the grocery on an empty stomach when we got back. i think i have enough food to weather the impending hn51 pandemic that will surely hit us. heheh. so i was watching some "kung fu" (season 2, disc 5 - netflix rules) sat. evening when a buddy called and said him and another fella were going to headup early sunday morning. was i up for it? ummm, yeah.
asleep at 10, up at 5:30 to catch the d-train up to the pass at 6:15. me, dwight, and timothy piled into the vintage mazda mpv as the sun was coming up over the fort. there was snow on the ground in town, and that usually means there is an s-load of new stuff up in the hills. on the way up the road was as bad as i've seen it in over 20 trips up to the pass this season. exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. you can't let yourself think too much about all of those fresh turns your gonna make when your constantly in danger of sliding off the road into the river. yeah well. we made it no problem. parked in a pull-out and dropped over the gaurd rail to make my second trek into paradise. yes, paradise bowls on back to back days. oh purdy effing good.
it snowed a total of 8-10 inches while we were out yesterday. it was cold enough that my camera wouldn't fire up - but i got a couple of good pics. we went higher and further than the day before, and did some very steep chutes on the way out. i was so fried by the end of the day that i barely made it up out of the valley and back to the van. it simply puked snow all day - 'goggles on' for the duration - it kept piling up and up and up. such a slow drive on the way down that we drank almost 12'ver of 90 schilling by the time we got into town at around 5 p.m. but you didn't read that here.
epic weekend, no whammies.
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