from_the_NEK
Active member
Instead of paying for a lift ticket to ski a tracked out resort (sorry BillSki), I decided to head into the wilderness where I was hoping 50 inches of untracked snow awaited.
Sunday morning I got up a played a hour of hockey (with no time on the bench from 7-8:00. Then me and one of the guys I play hockey with decided to go check out a spot I had been eyeing for several years.
Side Note: Unfortunately, as I feared, the glue on my climbing skins is unsalvageable and has turned into a goop that sticks and comes off on EVERYTHING. I spent 1.5 hours trying to get the crap off the bottom of my touring skis. So my next skiing related purchase is going to be a new set of mid-fat or fat skis that I'm going to mount my touring bindings on and get some new skins.
In light of the problem with the crapped up skins, I had to resort to snowshoeing. Which is far harder than skinning on top of the snow...
The first 2/3 of snowshoe in was easy. This was the type of terrain snowshoes were built for.
Then we got to the bottom of the steep part. Here is the veiw looking up the chute we plan to ski:
Snowshoeing up the steeps was brutal; lots of boulders and very deep settled powder that made taking the next step nearly impossible in places. A few of those places took 5+ minutes to progress upward 10 feet of vert. We stayed out of the chute since we didn't was to wreck the snow. 1.5 hours and a few impromptu repairs of snowshoe bindings later and we were at the top.
The chute was really nice. I would say about as steep as the main gully in the Gulf of Slides but only covering about 300-350 feet of vert. It was filled in with dense settled powder and no crust. The settled nature of the powder prevented face shots but had an awesome bottomless feel to it.
Looking down from the halfway point:
Down through the bottom:
Sunday morning I got up a played a hour of hockey (with no time on the bench from 7-8:00. Then me and one of the guys I play hockey with decided to go check out a spot I had been eyeing for several years.
Side Note: Unfortunately, as I feared, the glue on my climbing skins is unsalvageable and has turned into a goop that sticks and comes off on EVERYTHING. I spent 1.5 hours trying to get the crap off the bottom of my touring skis. So my next skiing related purchase is going to be a new set of mid-fat or fat skis that I'm going to mount my touring bindings on and get some new skins.
In light of the problem with the crapped up skins, I had to resort to snowshoeing. Which is far harder than skinning on top of the snow...
The first 2/3 of snowshoe in was easy. This was the type of terrain snowshoes were built for.
Then we got to the bottom of the steep part. Here is the veiw looking up the chute we plan to ski:
Snowshoeing up the steeps was brutal; lots of boulders and very deep settled powder that made taking the next step nearly impossible in places. A few of those places took 5+ minutes to progress upward 10 feet of vert. We stayed out of the chute since we didn't was to wreck the snow. 1.5 hours and a few impromptu repairs of snowshoe bindings later and we were at the top.
The chute was really nice. I would say about as steep as the main gully in the Gulf of Slides but only covering about 300-350 feet of vert. It was filled in with dense settled powder and no crust. The settled nature of the powder prevented face shots but had an awesome bottomless feel to it.
Looking down from the halfway point:
Down through the bottom:
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