End of the line. I parked at the turn off to Wildhorse canyon and snowmachined the 10or so miles to the trailhead. This photo really shows my style of riding, always stuck or about to be stuck. It also shows a few of the feeble layers in the snowpack.
Breaking weather. I set up camp in what felt like a safe spot on the lower slopes of the north face. (visibility was only a couple hundred feet) The wind blew a steady 20+ mph but died off as the clouds started to break and then quit completely by midnight. Hyndman peak just visible through the clouds
10 years ago, I trusted the weatherman about as much as an army recruiter but these days forecasting is usually spot on and I wasn’t surprised at all to wake up and see it bluebird.
I got to the summit at 11:00am after a slow and easy 3 hour skin. Zero wind and warm sunshine made it hard pretty to leave the view. This photo shows the true highpoint left on the ridge but there sure as hell aren’t any good ski lines off of it.
I’d hoped to ski down the large gully on the west face but an enormous avalanche had flushed out most of the snow and deposited it in massive pile on the plateau at 9,600’. I checked out a chute on North West face that had a heavy blanket of blown in snow. However, the top 3rd was a rock strewn 55* and the bottom had a definite terrain trap look about it so I settled on eeking my way down the West face through a minefield of boulders in 4” of new snow over hardpack. The turns were effortless even after a long pair of days. Hope that’s not the last powder day of the season!
