Day 26 - Thursday Feb 7 - A Backcountry Morning

I just don't get it. We are right in the middle of the best snow year I have ever skied and my regular touring partners are nowhere to be found. They really need to get their priorities straight. Luckily, I have made a few friends in the past couple years that I enjoy skiing with as well. I met Matt Young and two of his buddies, Cody and Eric, from Backcountry.com at the mouth of Little Cottonwood this morning at 5:20. The plan was to ski Pink Pine, but Little was closed due to avalanche danger. So we headed to Big. We were the fourth car at the Butler Fork trailhead so I expected to see a few others ahead of us. It didn't take us long to overtake them on the skintrack. It was still a little dark when we summited for our first lap, but by the time we transitioned there was just enough light to really get some great turns. I did, however, manage to miss seeing a small, snow-covered tree stump about half of the way down the hill which threw off my turns just a bit. The skiing was... you guessed it: amazing. We were in at least a foot of fresh powder and soft snow under that. I got just a little bit of a brainfreeze coming down from all the faceshots. We quickly put our skins back on and began the uphill push knowing we totally had time for another lap. By the time we reached the ridgeline this time it was totally light outside although we were not blessed with a beautiful sunrise this morning due to the cloud cover. We decided to ski down the East face which leads more directly to the car. I had never skied this line before and it was great. It was quite a long line with some good steep skiing. There was a bit of a wind crust on top of the ridge, but once you dropped in just a little the skiing was just as good or better than the other side. We got to the car quickly and packed up. Knowing I have been consistently late to class this whole semester, I decided I would just head straight to class. This got me there 30 minutes early! What's the story with that? It's a good thing I had Sudoku to keep me company because no one else was there.