Day 32: "If you're not having fun today, it's your own damn fault."
Those were the simple, yet profound words of an unidentified chairlift companion on Sugarloaf today. Deep snow, blue skies, warm air and no competition. I mean, when do you get to see Backside looking like this?
That was smooth, dense, creamy, perfectly consistent and bottomless. In other words, heli quality. Bobby Danger called this morning to say that they were skiing Snowbird this morning. I told him to knock themselves out, for after seeing on the morning report that a.m. control work was in progress on Backside, I knew where I wanted to be. Tele Jon and I managed to catch the opening of the High Notch hike right around 9:30. And hard to believe, there was no one else hiking around us! Despite this, parking lots were full. We could only guess that locals were staying home due to the holiday weekend and tourists didn't know where to go, especially as the gravity traverse into Yellow Trail remained closed for a while. I love it when ASP does that! \
/
We didn't go all the way out to High Notch, however, opting instead to drop High Yellow Trail from the ridgeline through pure untracked all the way down to lower Backside, where I found only two tracks in Glatch. It was positively dreamy...so dreamy, in fact, that we skied the entire vertical of Backside all the way to Albion.
Once out on the groomed, however, I realized that I was having some rather significant binding issues. I've spent little time on my Movement Goliaths this winter, and the last time was at PCMR when I couldn't adjust the toe height on my Silvretta Pures to accommodate the Salomon Quest 12 boots. Now that I was back out on the Goliaths for the first time since then, I was noticing for the first time a ridiculous amount of play in the toe piece that allowed me to rock the boot within the binding a good five degrees in either direction. Not good. Jon and I each swapped out our skis at the parking lot (Jon trading his Karhus for Nordica Blowers to go bigger, as I was forced to go smaller with the Volkl Explosive CMH's), and then headed up Collins for a second serving of Backside...which wasn't much more tracked out than the first time even thought the Instructor's Traverse was now open.
The line at Sunnyside was long, so we instead skied right onto the Albion slow boat to get back to Sugarloaf. Time wise, it was probably a wash. Riding Sugarloaf thereafter we spied a line in Glory Hole between strips of avalanche debris that had yet to be touched. We dropped that, too (and BTW the notch entrance to Glory Hole was as clean as it ever gets), finding snow a bit heavier and slabbier than elsewhere but nonetheless good skiing. The High T is in as good a shape as it ever is -- relatively smooth and actually soft for setting land speed records -- and we found still more untracked lines in Greeley Bowl and Susie's Trees. There was just no one else skiing in there. Amazing!
We wrapped up the morning with a drop into North Greeley proper (High Nowhere to Dougie's for me, while John explored a new line down to NR Bowl/Old Reliable) just as wispy clouds started drifting through.
Yet even as we got into afternoon there were still remarkably untracked lines in there.
Clouds got thicker still as we ate lunch at Rustler Lodge.
They eventually enveloped all of the Flagstaff ridgeline, Patsy Marley and Baldy itself. My quads were starting to cramp up, too, especially after Saturday's full-on charge, so after lunch I called it a day to head back to the Valley to attempt to warranty my bindings. I'm hoping for good news by midweek.
Those were the simple, yet profound words of an unidentified chairlift companion on Sugarloaf today. Deep snow, blue skies, warm air and no competition. I mean, when do you get to see Backside looking like this?
That was smooth, dense, creamy, perfectly consistent and bottomless. In other words, heli quality. Bobby Danger called this morning to say that they were skiing Snowbird this morning. I told him to knock themselves out, for after seeing on the morning report that a.m. control work was in progress on Backside, I knew where I wanted to be. Tele Jon and I managed to catch the opening of the High Notch hike right around 9:30. And hard to believe, there was no one else hiking around us! Despite this, parking lots were full. We could only guess that locals were staying home due to the holiday weekend and tourists didn't know where to go, especially as the gravity traverse into Yellow Trail remained closed for a while. I love it when ASP does that! \
/ We didn't go all the way out to High Notch, however, opting instead to drop High Yellow Trail from the ridgeline through pure untracked all the way down to lower Backside, where I found only two tracks in Glatch. It was positively dreamy...so dreamy, in fact, that we skied the entire vertical of Backside all the way to Albion.
Once out on the groomed, however, I realized that I was having some rather significant binding issues. I've spent little time on my Movement Goliaths this winter, and the last time was at PCMR when I couldn't adjust the toe height on my Silvretta Pures to accommodate the Salomon Quest 12 boots. Now that I was back out on the Goliaths for the first time since then, I was noticing for the first time a ridiculous amount of play in the toe piece that allowed me to rock the boot within the binding a good five degrees in either direction. Not good. Jon and I each swapped out our skis at the parking lot (Jon trading his Karhus for Nordica Blowers to go bigger, as I was forced to go smaller with the Volkl Explosive CMH's), and then headed up Collins for a second serving of Backside...which wasn't much more tracked out than the first time even thought the Instructor's Traverse was now open.
The line at Sunnyside was long, so we instead skied right onto the Albion slow boat to get back to Sugarloaf. Time wise, it was probably a wash. Riding Sugarloaf thereafter we spied a line in Glory Hole between strips of avalanche debris that had yet to be touched. We dropped that, too (and BTW the notch entrance to Glory Hole was as clean as it ever gets), finding snow a bit heavier and slabbier than elsewhere but nonetheless good skiing. The High T is in as good a shape as it ever is -- relatively smooth and actually soft for setting land speed records -- and we found still more untracked lines in Greeley Bowl and Susie's Trees. There was just no one else skiing in there. Amazing!
We wrapped up the morning with a drop into North Greeley proper (High Nowhere to Dougie's for me, while John explored a new line down to NR Bowl/Old Reliable) just as wispy clouds started drifting through.
Yet even as we got into afternoon there were still remarkably untracked lines in there.
Clouds got thicker still as we ate lunch at Rustler Lodge.
They eventually enveloped all of the Flagstaff ridgeline, Patsy Marley and Baldy itself. My quads were starting to cramp up, too, especially after Saturday's full-on charge, so after lunch I called it a day to head back to the Valley to attempt to warranty my bindings. I'm hoping for good news by midweek.
