February 13, 2005, White's Knuckle - MRNP

Longmire seemed like a snow slider's old home week.  We ran into a whole gaggle of folks. The ones that I remember were Brian (from Utah), Ross, Tom and Eva, Michael and Corinne, Kam, Chris, Allyson, Kelvin Rick, Marco, Evan and Melissa, and a bunch of others my dementia is blocking me from recalling right now.  
Robie also was also there gearing up to give blood working with a group of new Tacoma Mountaineer skiers honing their new skills on Robie's experience.

For a while it looked like the gate at Longmire may open before the forecast 10:00 opening.  But, alas, the road crew decided another sand truck needed to be out of our reach so we were headed up the road to Paradise by 10:10.

A gaggle of the usual suspects convened to gear up at the Paradise trailhead.
Sam It was great meeting you there today.  I have wanted to put a face and a handshake to that svaiusini handle for a long time.

Before you could blink an eye everyone was off in a flash and us old folks (Jeanette, Jerry, Dick and myself) were left in the dust (or, I guess in this case it would be, snow flurries).  With little to no hope of getting ahead of the pack for first tracks on any of the more renowned slopes,  we relegated ourselves to settling for snooping around on the less desirable, passed over aspects above Paradise that were more within the cruising range of folks needing a walker to get their skis on.

Dick Lambe prompted a rename of the line of our second untracked run to "Lamb's Skin" (not to be confused with any type of prophylactic aid) by skiing the entire run top to bottom (or at least the parts where he was upright) with one skin on and one skin off.  It was a memorable scene to see a skier as skilled as Dick (who, BTW, NEVER falls) falling every second to third turn to the bottom where he finally came to a sort of divine revelation and announced to Jerry, "Shit, one of my skins is still on".  Way to go, Dick, now there's four of us that probably won't do that again. We sincerely thank you for the lesson.  It was a treat to finally watch someone else (besides me) learn something the hard way for a change  ;).

Next stop was the highlight of our day (well, ok, second highlight of our day), White's Knuckle, a little 40 degree chute above the 30 degree run of puffy knolls we call "Pillow Talk", all again, untracked until we got there.  We accessed the bottom via "Y Not" as we had to boot it up White's Knuckle to make sure it was clear (it's hard to see the entire line from the top or the bottom and with the low snow pack we were not sure the line would go).  

Pillow talk, Just below White's Knuckle was so sweet we did double duty there.

All in all a stellar day with more occasional snow flurries, punctuated with sun breaks.   West and south facing aspects has shallower crusts which in some places would not support heaver skiers (yeah, like me  ???). East and north facing aspects seemed devoid of the shallower sun crusts and we skied on the walkable January crust when we sank down through the light and fresh, which ranged to anywhere from four inches to a foot of untracked bliss.

Jerry should have a viddy up in a day or two and Jeanette promised to post some more stills.

Rock on.