12/6 Ski Tour 10K

Mountains that face south would have you believe that winter hasn't started yet. View down Cardiff Fork , BCC.

Yesterday I felt like a 10k. 10,000 feet of elevation gain that is-despite the loss of hearing and congestion from the cold that I've had.  I headed up LCC and made a lap up hidden peak. As I was about to rip skins at the top of the Peruvian lift, sitting there coughing--I looked down and saw someone skinning upwards. I decided to wait and see who it was. It was Teague. He easily talked me into the the last couple hundred feet of vert up to the tramdock. We ripped skins and skied down. I tried to follow Teague down, but he outskied me pretty easily. I hopped in the car and drove up to Grizzly gulch where I met up with the Asian Sensations: Andy, Jason, and Jared. Josh was there too. More getting outskied was about to happen.

If I have any chance in keeping up with the Sensations I have to be on full race gear. The pace was pretty fast until Jared and Jason left us at noon. We continued skiing, continuing west along the LCC/BCC ridgeline until we were too pooped or time ran out.

Under bluebird skies, we headed up Grizzly to the honeycomb cliffs, skied some rocks and powder into Silver, climbed up Davenport(?) & out Silver (Jared and Jason leave), skied down Jaws (really aesthetic line) into Days Fork, then up and out Days, over to Holy Toledo (best run of the day!)  into Cardiff, around the subridge, up to the top of Cardiac Ridge (super cool line--I wouldn't have done this without Andy breaking trail for a long ways to the top) including booting the last couple hundred feet stepping lightly on a rock slab covered with snow. (Steepest, coolest looking run of the day)

Booter to the top of Cardiac Ridge. Stolen from Andy's Blog. So sue me, I steal.

Then finally making my way over to pole line to exit Cardiff & did a little Hellen Keller skiing back down to the highway and walking back to the Grizzly Gulch parking lot.

In my dreams I think of runs like the ones I skied. The snow was better on some than others, but all runs were excellent, high-quality, giggling-inducing fun skiing. May this winter have much more of the same.

Clouds moved in later on in the day. Looking back towards Cardiac Ridge.

10k and feeling great!

Stats: Garmin showed 9,539 but doesn't include about 20 minutes of skinning from me forgetting to push start. I think I can comfortably call it at 10,000.

Skin failures: 4. Thankfully I had two pairs of skins. Need to fix the glue again though.

Calories: Not enough. The last couple hours I was thinking about sandwiches. Big tasty sandwiches.