Yeah, dude. Another powder day. Cody came over to my house last night to help me wax the three pairs of Insanes we were each planning to see today. It was very educational, and I plan to do this again sometime. We met at 5:30 am at the park-n-ride at 39th and Wasatch. I was nominated to drive and so they got to enjoy the beautifully orchestrated noises of Wilco - A Ghost is Born along with me (is anybody as stoked for their new album as I am
?). We all put on our Insanes in the Grizzly Gulch parking lot and CJ couldn't help but notice the lightweight nature of the Insane/Switchback combo. We skinned up the gulch to Twin Lakes Pass and then around Patsy Marley to the Wolverine Cirque. All the while I was enjoying the conversation primarily between Cody and CJ (with the occasional comment thrown in by yours tru
ly) about efficiency and style in telemark and AT skiing. The conclusion that I came up with, after what seemed to be a long time arguing, is that when you telemark you sacrifice efficiency to some extent. But when you AT you sacrifice style, fun, face shots in all kinds of conditions, etc. etc. I think in my mind telemark won. CJ and Cody are planning on skiing t
he NorthWest couloir of the Pfeifferhorn tomorrow so they wanted to do something today that would prepare them. So we did Roman's couloir. Now, some of you may know that what is always first in my mind is taking care of the environment. If I had joined them in th
e rappel down the first cliff face, we would have had to leave some webbing at the top. I just did not feel right about this and I decided to skip this section of the course and enter in at Zoot Chute and traverse over to Roman's so that I could clean all the gear from the top. I feel like I have done my good deed for the day (remember that my skipping the rappel had nothing to do with my fear of heights and everything to do with my care for the environment). The chute was great. The snow was deep. The
turns were nice. The skis and bindings were superior. Everything was just going well. We skied out the apron and that was really nice. We then made our way back into Grizzly Gulch and back to the car (with a few turns through the trees and such on the way). Cody was supposed to be at a meeting at work by like 10:00 (h
e has recently been hired as a ski buyer for Backcountry.com). We didn't get back to his car at the park-n-ride until 10:30. Oops. I am sure they will understand. It was a good day. It was an exciting day. I don't plan to become a hardcore ski mountaineer anytime soon, but I did have a good time today. Oh, yeah, and here's a picture of CJ taking a wizzzzzz.
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