2/12/01
Did a repeat of what is becoming a standard route in the quiver - hike above Meadows ski area and then drop into the White River Canyon below the Wy'East face. Was Matt and I again and another pharmacist from work - Shawn.
| Obligitory march up the groomers |
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The climb up was beautiful, bright sunshine and big cloud sea below. It had been about a month since we last did this route. We have gotten a couple of big dumps since then and the thin ridge ride up to the drop-in spot was a little more boulevard-like, though still a fine example of "technical skinning."
| Another beautiful Cascade Cloud Sea below. |
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| Matt and Shawn negotiate the "whoopty's" on the ridge in fine style. Heather Canyon is below left. |
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Once we gained to the top bowl of the shot we stopped for a very warm break (the winds were absolutely dead calm and the sun was bright so even though the air temp was in the upper 20's it felt like 60). Matt dug a pit and found a top layer of pretty soft stuff with about a 2 inch layer of wind hardened on top, then below that a really solid ice layer from a warm event not too long ago. Below that was a pretty continuous 3-4 foot layer of consolidated styrofoam.
| Matt does a little sculpting. |
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We did a new-to-me test for weak layer strength called the "Cantilever Beam Test". Basically once you find a weak layer (for us it was the top 8 inches or so) you undercut it so there's just air beneath and then cut out the sides 1/2 at a time. A good test for tensile strength in that layer.
Did a short skin up to the top of a long snow ramp of 30-35 degrees and Shawn did the first-turn honors. The skiing was pretty manly - in the course of every 20-30 turns we might encounter tough, carvable windslab, breakable thin windslab, powder, and super-smooth velvety butter-snow. We all managed with some thrills, chills, and spills! Oh well. Once you commit to a line you pretty much "takes what you gets." Some of the turns were exceptionally good.
| Matt doing a little powder sampling for his pleasure. |
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Skiing out the Canyon on this line is the usual and customary turns-traverse-turns-traverse pattern . . . .
| Shawn and Matt contemplating a sense of scale in the upper canyon. |
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As the day continued to warm, the cloud sea below started getting a little more puffy with the heating and we got into some decreasing visibility before we jumped down the final pitch.
| Matt (in the distance) carving the third line and getting intimate with the atmosphere at 7000 feet. |
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We eyeballed a couple of hapless hucksters who had boarded a line out of bounds and into the canyon. They were in the process of climbing a super-steep pitch back up into the area. They must have followed the tracks of a much larger group of boarders who had crossed the Meadows boundary. When we reached the top of the final triangle we could hear a horde of voices at the bottom - a group of about 20 boarders who were busy building a ramp. They had chewed the final pitch up a bit but there were still some continuous lines down the middle and right aspects of the pitch - these turns were tasty! Seems like this pitch always preserves quality snow the longest.
| Matt (L) and Shawn - aka "Vic" and "Tim." |
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We were able to find snowbridges across the glacier drainages where
there had been none a month earlier. This allowed us to gain the
West aspect of the runout and made for a pretty fun exit. Back to
the truck, did the shuttle back to Matt's rig in the Meadows lot for
a beer and debrief.