Lost Trail Powder Mt., MT 12/27/02

JSpin

New member
I meant to send this off yesterday, but had a bit of trouble uploading the video file to the server... <BR> <BR>It looks as though we're finally getting some much needed snow here in Montana, as a series of storms come ashore and donate some of their moisture to the northern reaches this time. Lost Trail reported 7 inches of new snow at 6:00 A.M., and snow still falling, so I headed up for the morning to check it out. The way it was pouring down here in the valley, I knew it would be dumping at the pass (7,000'). We'd had about an inch of snow overnight in Hamilton (3,650'), but temperatures rose with a southerly wind and we went over to rain. As I drove south to the mountain, rain changed to snow right after the town of Darby at 3,900'. It was really interesting, I could look ahead and see a wall of white, not a gradual mix, just instant transition to snow. Rain did mix back in a bit until the bottom of the pass (5,000') at which point it changed over to snow for good. <BR> <BR>I'd made good time, and arrived right around opening chair, but had to fiddle around a bit before skiing. One reason was to pick up my pass which I'd dropped off to get the photo a couple days earlier, but the other was to set up our new head cam for testing. We're trying to develop a bomb-proof setup that can be readily transferred between skiers. There are a lot of wires, plus a battery pack, the head cam itself, and the camcorder, so it'll take a while to get things running smoothly. <BR> <BR>The delay wasn't really a problem, since there were surprisingly few skiers and they'd opened up a whole load of new terrain. The snow had fallen a bit on the heavy side (~10% H2O), but it felt great to make long sustained powder runs. I decided to play it safe, and used my old straight rock skis, but there was a good base so I never hit anything. I think I may need to get out on long straight boards more often though to build up my legs, all these midfats and fat boards are making it too easy and it was hard work on the thin sticks. <BR> <BR>Well, lots of face shots were had on the steeper terrain, and I caught a few on video during my tests. The scariest moment was when I looked down and realized the camera had fallen out from a rather risky setup I was trying, oh the horror! I began to gradually work my way back up the trail to search for it (I tried at first in just boots but post-holed up to my waist and had to return and put my skis on). Eventually a patroller came by and asked what was up. I told him what had happened, and he said they'd hit the lift and search from above. I had been hiking for about 20 minutes when I hear whoops and hollers from above; they'd found it. As if the skiing hadn't beaten me up enough, 20 minutes of hiking in deep snow threw me over the top. As I headed back down to the car to dry the camera off, I realized I was bonking and had to down a Clif Bar. That got things going, but I figured I'd pushed hard enough for one day and it was already noon. There weren't even enough skiers to track out the terrain, it was going to snow through the night, and I knew tomorrow would be great. I packed things up and headed for home. Hopefully snow accumulations will be good tomorrow and I'll make some more turns. <BR> <BR>I put together some of the test footage in little web video for those that are interested. I made it fairly small (~3 MB) to save space, but it should give an idea of the filming/conditions. You should be able to click on the link below and watch it, or right click (PC) and download it to <BR>your computer. <BR> <BR><A HREF="http://www.uvm.edu/~jsilveir/LTHC27DEC02.mov" TARGET="_blank">http://www.uvm.edu/~jsilveir/LTHC27DEC02.mov</A> <BR> <BR>J.Spin
 
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