Operation Track Out Broken Top

March 23rd, 2013

Skiers: Court Brock, Erik Schmidt, and Lindsey Clark

A special visitor came to town from Tahoe, interested in skiing big lines and good snow. You know what that means... we headed to Broken Top.

The plan was to ski Pucker first, then traverse over to the crater to ski whatever else looked good. On our way across the meadow, we saw some tiny ants making their way up the ridge: we'd been beaten to it! Not to fear, the mountain is huge and full of ski lines. So we changed our plans and headed straight for the crater. On our way, we saw the cornice on the top of Pucker collapse.

Cutting the cornice before skiing Pucker is a totally reasonable thing to do: it can be helpful to make an entrance into the line, you can use it to observe the current avalanche conditions, and it is easy to see if anyone is down below you so you don't take them out. We figured it was part of the group's plan, witnessed the huge sluff with awe, and were on our way.

We skinned over to the southeast ridge, and began booting up a fun, hidden couloir that Erik really likes called 1:59. Court was breaking trail, Erik second, and I was bringing up the rear. As we were approaching the top, I heard voices behind me, and realized that the group from Pucker was in the bootpack behind us! Two groups of skiers in the same bootpack on one big, wild mountain. I still don't know what they were thinking. Chatting at the top, we found out that the cornice break in Pucker was not intentional. Scary!

We got out of there quickly, and skied the fun line.

Me:

Erik:

Next, we skinned up the moraine and up to the top of the 1:00 face. Court was excited to be on the very top of a pile of rock!

 

While he was up there, he took a photo of Erik and I down below.

We skied past a rad rock pinnacle, and down into the crater.

Erik:

Me:

Court was pretty happy about how his ski day was going.

We decided to ski a third line on our way out, and headed over to 3:00 couloir. It already had tracks in it from the other group, and was pretty sun-affected with lots of balling, but none of us were complaining!

Court:

Me:

We did our best to track out Broken Top that day. Between our group skiing three lines, and the other group skiing five, we had almost the entire front of the mountain covered in skin tracks, boot packs, and turns. Our apologies to everyone who went out the next day!

Check out Court's photos from the rest of his Oregon volcano tour at powdork.com.