With the recent heat and wind adding to the persistent instabilities lurking in the snowpack, many of our first choices for today were quickly knocked off the list. Nick suggested heading north of Crested Butte up the Slate River valley to a zone I've never skied before. 30 minutes of jarring tandem sledding through huge crusty whoops did not increase my enthusiasm as we arrived at the base of the zone.
Warm weather and light snow greeted us as we headed up:
At the top we quickly realized that we were looking at an untracked zone filled with creamy settled powder; we started it out in proper fashion:
Photo: Nick Matisse
Nick:
Adam composed in the air...
...only to find a grabby wind crust in the landing:
Run two brought more drops:
Photo: Nick Matisse
Adam:
back to his usual stomping form:
Beat from the first two runs, we enjoyed the creamy snow and some fun pillows on our last run:
Photo: Adam Buckwalter
Adam scopes lines for another day:
Today was one of those sleeper days - I went out not expecting to find good snow, but instead found creamy untracked snow with the zone to ourselves!
