More goodness

A few of us went out skiing this past Sunday. It was quite a bit colder and grayer than our prior outing, but visibility was good enough and there was some sweet new snow. We parked near the large bend in the road near the bottom-center of the map and skinned northward toward the peak at the top-center of the map (the dashed line designates the Wilderness Area boundary).

With Aaron leading the charge, skinning was easy. We worked our way up a snowed-in creek bed, and through a few clearings......eventually working our way up through a timbered slope (which we later got some great turns on...Keri and Joy on the way up:Eventually, we worked our way through the trees and got to the base of a steep, open face. Since the snow has been marginal all year, we dug a snowpit and performed a compression test. After getting a clean, smooth break about two feet deep on the third elbow tap, we decided we were high enough and pointed our tips down.Heading up for another lap:
While we were heading up for our second lap, we got inundated with snowmobiles. While snowmobiles are an unfortunate fact of life while skiing Togwotee Pass, we had hoped to avoid them this day since we were on the border of Wilderness Area (where they are outlawed).

Sometimes I think there must be something about riding a snowmobile that makes people stupid. As we approached the top of our run, near where we dug our snowpit and found the avalanche-prone layer, a snowmobiler blasted up the steep slope we turned away from and got stuck 90% of the way up (right where you might expect an avalanche crown). Despite the clinic these folks administered on what not to do in avalanche country, the slope held. And its a good thing it did. On our trip out, we ran into a few people from their party--all very rotund individuals without any apparent avalanche knowledge or gear.

With dark lazily approaching, we took two short laps through a steeper timbered slope and headed for the trucks, tired and ready for a beer.