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March 17, 2013, Fumbelin

3/17/13
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Posted by cchapin on 3/17/13 12:18pm
Arrived to the lot first this morning of BC tourers.  Knowing this meant there was no existing skin track, decided to dig out the crapper.  Two more cars arrived during this time.  Got back to the car and decided to eat breakfast.  Sadly the car next to us started to do the same - after they put their ski boots on!  We had a challenge here.  They gave us a few more glances and seeing we were helping ourselves to additional courses, poured another mug of their hot beverage.  Dang they were good.  So we started to gear up when 2 guys started to walk up.  Show time.  We followed in pursuit and 2 others followed suit.  Time to strip a layer - booya now 4 dudes were out in front!  They made a scenic track up to the standard old growth runs and we pleasantly followed enjoying the scenery.

ok ok... Good quality powder but still easy to hit the crunchy layer underneath while in the trees.  Open areas were much nicer.  Quite a bit of wind at times along the ridge.  Saw about 10 people there throughout the day.

sadly I did have to break some trail towards the end of the day.
Sorry, I don't have a picture of Chris digging out the crapper, but I have a picture of Chris fumbelin' with the wind on the ridge



and fumbelin' with the snow:

Wow - that's some advanced skinning technique.  We were the second party on the skin track, and we wondered what kind of person drops a layer 15 feet from the parking lot.  A smarter person than me, apparently.  In a credit to our own cleverness and underhandedness, a well-timed water break kept us from catching the first party before the summit. 
We found incredibly light powder for our first couple laps, after which about 15 minutes of sunlight noticeably dampened everything, resulting in merely great snow.

LOL!!!  Hahahah, that's awesome, thanks for sharing.

This post would not have been possible without the guidance from 'ron j' :)

Well, now I know why it took so long for people to catch us!  :)  Quite the good day.  I've never seen so much wind affected snow up there.  The south facing stuff was quite nice though, especially since I didn't have to break that trail back up.

No sign of the trail broken by Sunday's skiers.  Too much new, plus wind deposition.  Trail breaking was quite arduous for our party of 5, until one of our party's skins fell off and got completely lost in the snow.  He had to dig around quite a while before he found it.  That tells you how deeeeep it was.  While we were searching, a strong party of 7(!) from Leavenworth caught up.  Then our trailbreaking chores were over for the day.

Even DURING Sunday the skin tracks were disappearing partially in spots that were particularly windy -- filling to the 8" deep brim in the less than 45 minutes it took between laps. Was a good illustration of the rate of wind transport vs falling snow.

I never made it over to the typical clearcut/oldgrowth side and was lapping some of the western runs that people typically use as the exit shots. The best run in fact was the straightshot from just below the basin with the old chair terminal, down to parking lot. Almost seems like it's been brushed out from vs what I remember from 10 years ago?

After late lunch I went over to the ski area and hit up some of the sidecountry. I'd say that the snow in the ski area sidecountry was actually better than what I found @ Yodelin on Sunday, it was easier to find open areas where depositation was deep enough to cover the crust. Really good runs down Highlands trees and into Grace. The new 5PM Sunday close time is kind of a bummer.

Some pictures from Sunday.  There's a skier somewhere in that cloud in the first shot.

author=cchapin link=topic=27941.msg117584#msg117584 date=1363633343]
LOL!!!  Hahahah, that's awesome, thanks for sharing.

This post would not have been possible without the guidance from 'ron j' :)


Out-Fubelin makes life more mellow .  ;)
Nice work.

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2013-03-17 19:18:37