... mid-January and we finally received a bit of appreciable snow accumulation last weekend... headed up on the ridge but after only about a half mile we soon found that the sparse (5 inches at best - 3 inches on average) snow blanket did little to shield track grabbing rocks and large stones - treacherous conditions when accelerating along any appreciable downslope... it only took one good face-plant after descending several hundred feet down a favorite, occasionally steep hollow and we realized that conditions weren't going to improve in the lower elevations and increasingly forest-shrouded trail...
... we opted to abandon the steeps for the day and return to the ridge top and better ski conditions - wide open, rolling (no steeps) and deeper snow... hey, at least it's powder - which we discovered wasn't the case either - because of the underlying unfrozen and wet ground (it was sixty degree weather only days before), what was slick powder on the way in was sticky board grabbing softpack on the backtrack - the days high 30's temperatures didn't help either...
... although, a lot better conditions were to be found along the high ground...
... pretty good tracking when keeping to the grassy open fields and game pastures...
... MGS, behind the lens, directing a bit of 'mise en scene' composition...
... once we got it figured out, wasn't a bad few hours of skiing...
No comments:
Post a Comment