Monday--Jewel Basin
On Monday, my buddy Caleb and a friend of his traveled into the Jewel Basin area searching for altitude and hopefully some fresh turns. We climbed about 4000 vertical feet to the radio tower on the crest of the Swan Range, thought about climbing Mt. Aeneas but were deterred by the apparent howling winds on the summit, and retreated back to the shelter of the trees. Caleb and I skied a great run down "Checkerboard," with whoops and hollers and grins plastered on our faces!
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| Caleb and Rich beastin' it up the ridge to Radio Ridge. |
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| It was an amazingly clear morning, albeit a little windy, but a storm moved in and snowed hard by 1 in the afternoon. |
Wednesday started with a plan to go back and ski a couple of laps on Checkerboard in the Jewel. Then we ran into our friend Brandon who graciously offered the use of his snow mobile and suggested we go into Spider Bowl, a couple of miles North of the Jewel, saying the snow was good the day before and there would be a skin track to follow from his assault. With a little prodding and a visit to the local car parts store for a smaller ball for my dad's hitch we went to Plan B and tore up to the Spider. Caleb, Randy, and I skinned up to the ridge, dug a snow pit, and, finding the conditions bomber, skied un-tracked snow. It was a little difficult skiing since the warm weather made the snow a little like mashed potatoes, but we survived... It was good enough for a second lap up to the ridge even. Probably a 4000-4500 foot day.
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| Caleb shredding the fresh stuff. |
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| Looking down at all the vertical still to go! What a great run! Randy (left) and Caleb. |
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| The snow-dog named Millie. She romped around all day like a champion of the mountains. I was impressed. |
Saturday--Middle Fork
Dad and I "stormed" our way into the Flathead Range for a tour in the Skiumah Creek area. I have been lucking-out this year and been able to follow a lot of skin tracks. One pounded its way up a ridge that we happened to want to follow too, and follow it we did until encountering enough fresh snow that the tracks were unrecognizable. A winter storm warning was in effect for the whole region and it was definitely hitting hard where we were. Thankfully there was no wind, but it snowed on us really hard the whole day. My head was really wet, icicles even dripping in my face, but I wasn't sweating.
Near the top of the trail-breaking slog, we started entering steeper and steeper terrain and noticing soft slabs sliding into our skin track. We bailed into the trees, deciding to not ski any higher. When we dug a snow pit we found Compression Test failures of CT2 @ 25 cm and CT14 @ 40 cm (the CT# refers to the number of taps on a shovel blade on an isolated column of snow). Neither were extremely snappy or energetic and neither propagated in Extended Column tests. With the added load of the current significant snow fall our decision was to ski back down the ridge following our skin track. The skiing was lower angle but still really fresh and really good, complete with face shots. On steeper rollovers we would kick off larger soft slab avalanches. It was crazy to see the energy transfer along the snowpack: shooting cracks and even energy transferring down the slope to start a slab 15 feet in front of my skis. Thankfully, we were never really in a compromising situation and thus it was fun to be a geeky snow scientist all afternoon.
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| A soft slab avalanche I started when I stopped just above a steeper roll over. Dad is in a safe zone in the upper left and you can see a "block" as rest on the bed surface in the lower right. |
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| Face shots! As an aspiring ski photographer I've been experimenting with shots. Thanks to my friend Tim for lots of tips, the most relevant being, "You have to take a lot of bad ones to get a good one." |
Gaining Elevation
If you hadn't noticed, you really have to "earn your turns" while backcountry skiing. The climbing can be difficult, but the descent is more than rewarding enough to be offset the effort it took to get to the top of the run. This was a big week for me, even the ski bum that I am. I've got to crank it up though if I'll ever catch up to Greg Hill. The Canadian skier just finished his goal to ski 2 million vertical feet, all by human power, in one year. He's amazing...and nuts. I've yet to do more than one 6000 ft day and he regularly does 10k days at Rogers Pass, BC. Hopefully I'll be there some day.
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