Nov 26, 2010, Mt Thielsen

Brenda and I took a break from the holiday festivities in Roseburg to check out our usual Thanksgiving tour. Many years there's barely enough snow to skin from the car. This year there was plenty of coverage at the climbers trailhead (5400'). Broke trail for some 4 miles up to the west ridge and PCT crossing at 7400'. Mostly around 18" of very consistent settled powder on top of a very hard base.  Previous days sun had released lots of tree bombs, so islands of nasty crust had to be avoided on the downhill.  We did a short run down the southwest slope from the ridge then climbed up to just shy of 8000'.  Found very nice snow on what I thought would have been totally wind wacked. Long cruise out with a short detour to avoid a huge 2 year old blowdown had us at the car at dark, as usual.  Nice tour, but not a ton of turns. Though we still managed close to 3K vertical.  Brenda got another chance to dial in her new NTN rig, this being her third time out on it. I think I've made another convert.