^^^ I teamed up with a t-tipper one of the days, and I was wondering why the trailhead that he mentioned seemed oddly familiar, though I had never been there - until I realized I remembered it from your recent TR. The details -
Round 1, 6/18, evans - needed something to fit in between an 11 AM arrival at the airport and a 6:00 meeting in golden. Really not a lot of snow there - the pictured line on the north face was by far the best, with the bowl just to lookers left also somewhat filled in but much more affected by tracks from the summit, roller balls, and a wet slide from the snowfall a week previous (by the time I got to it, it was cooked through - nothing more than ankle deep and limited roller balls only during the descent... at 3:30 PM
). Other aspects up there were more limited and dirtier, though the prominent line directly to the west of summit lake parking held top-to-bottom cover, and an ugly cornice.
Round 2, 6/21, was pawnee, per jfeller's (ttips) recommendation. A good one, and we had a great time up there. A few patches of snow on the approach until treeline, then disconnected patches above that. But it was good where there was snow, and despite our less-than-ideal timing that resulted from my constraints, skiing rather nicely at noon on the solstice. Looking down from the summit, the north side of pawnee didn't have much at all. The south side of toll was in but dirty and not looking too long for this world.
Everything was going fast.
Round 3, 6/22, was a hike up flattop. The drainage NE of Ptarmigan had decent cover, but hadn't fully softened and was a bit much for me and my leather boots. Tyndall was pretty much just the "glacier" and then very disconnected patches below that - pass. Chaos was much longer and more continuous, but had a dicier runout that me and my leather boots didn't care for - and would have been a long hike out over the "chaos" on the valley floor to get out. Andrews was perfect! Good thing since my chips were in. A few passing hikers were subjected to my whoops and hollers. A few rotten patches of snow below the lake. At the trail junction the snow was done - I ran the rest down (nice light gear!), which was a bit surreal as I was whizzing by the hoardes of folks out for a casual summer stroll in their national park.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cat in January
Amazing powder in northern Japan. I almost went this last winter. Great trip report. Thanks for sharing.
|
I've recently been drooling over some TRs from there. It's on the short list!
nice skiing with you Joe!)
Linear Mode
