Skiers: Lindsey Clark, Erik Schmidt and Liam Myers
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| Liam channeling his inner "Mellow Daddy" |
The 2011/2012 ski season has taken its sweet time getting started. After a handful of bottomless powder days, we have been suffering through an epic, extended high pressure system that has filled TGR forums and facebook walls with complaints, prayers, requests for snow dances, and even death threats to Ullr. The blindingly sunny days just keep coming. Ugh.
Rather than continue to wait for the snow to arrive, Erik and I decided to commit to skiing the little snow we've got now. We talked our friend Liam into coming along. Broken Top seemed like a great option, with a huge variety of terrain and aspects to ski. There had to be something holding snow!
Getting out to Broken Top on our snowmobiles was quick and painless. There were a few inches of snow on a firm base, which made for easy and no-nonsense travel out to the wilderness boundary. From there, we skinned out to the middle of the meadow where we ran into Schralper, who had just skied the 1:00 area in the bowl. It looked GNARLY -- his white tracks were probably visible for miles away, etched into the brown snow.
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| Broken Top: not quite open for business... |
Schralper confirmed what we were already thinking: the bowl was still not really ready to ski, with rocks showing everywhere. So we climbed up the West ridge to ski one regular favorite, and one new spot we'd never skied.
The regular favorite, Lunch Bowl, is a leeward slope and probably never sees the sun this time of year. Therefore, even this short line was a great time with no sketchy rocks and plenty of soft snow. Then a short skin back up to the top put us at the top of what I deemed "Mellow Daddy Pyramid", a 800' slope that would appeal to the most discriminating meadow skipper... or Mellow Daddy.
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| Rippin' skins for round two! |
Mellow Daddy turned out to be super fun! A couple ledges at the top, plus rocks and trees to avoid, and creamy corn snow made for a mighty fine ski. We were all wearing huge grins at the bottom. What's everyone complaining about? It's springtime in the Cascades!
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| Erik getting mellow... |
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| We skied the slope in the sun. Because that's what mellow people do! |
We arrived back at the wilderness boundary at 4:20, just as the sun dropped below the horizon. A quick ride back to the sno-park in the dark got us back by 5. Another super fun day out on Broken Top, and a great start to our backcountry ski season!
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| Perfect time, perfect place! |
