January 2 - Rock Mtn

3rd time was the charm for topping out on Rock. First two attempts were both in poor vis, so it was nice to spend a bluebird day climbing to the top.

Skintrack was already in, just had to choose the right one, which we did not. Stick on the road instead of climbing off the bat:)

No winds until we got near the ridge, where strong easterly gusts kept us moving, though the summit was quite comfortable. Drop-in notch on the ridge was howling, though. Westerly cornices were present...significant 4cm knife hard windslab behind the cornices.... made for some tricky travel to the summit. We got a bit greedy and skiied down closer to 5200' before regaining the ridge, which made for a bit of steep sidehill skinning. 5400' is a better place to traverse hard over... that shot through the trees is a sucker.

Skiing was quite good. Some suncrust about halfway down, though you could plow through it well enough.

Here's a gif of Garrett taking one of the nicer lines: http://makeagif.com/i/lvLAGH

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