days four and five

after bailing a little early on a graduation party friday night, it was up at 5 to make the 6 o'clock rendezvous at d.hall's. tim was in attendance and that made three of us for the day.

first observation was that it was flippin' cold. about 4 degrees in town; -2 when we left the comfort of the pathfinder at cp. most days i'm very happy earning my turns, keeping warm on the way up in the skin track. today i t was so cold that i honestly was looking forward to the going up part as opposed to the going down part of backcountry skiing. movement against gravity=warmth=good. today it was so cold that none of our cameras were working. so no pics. use your imagination.

we did 3700 feet of vertical before old man winter chased us back to the trailhead. good turns, no avalanches (where we were at least - saw a giant release over on south diamond peak). only real oddity of the day was a goddamn helicopter buzzing us on our first descent of north diamond peak. i think they wanted to watch us go down, but it was disconcerting because a). its just weird to be looking eye to eye with a helicopter pilot whilst your contemplating a run off of the continental divide and b). the rotor wash was dusting off all the powder we had been working to get too. that i thought it might set off an avy. bastards. this ain't valdez. beat it.

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sunday i slept in (two holiday parties to attend on saturday evening) then got up and drove up to snowy mountain range for a day of cheap lift served skiing. not much open, and the snow could've been better, but you won't find me complaining as it was opening weekend and the lift tickets were ony 10 bucks.

heres some math for you:


10 dollars for the lift ticket,
15 runs,
1000 feet of vertical drop per run,

so thats 15,000 feet vertical for the day.
66 cents per run.
i'm to lazy to figure out the actual cost per vertical foot of descent, so i'm not going to.

either way i got my money worth, yo.