|
|
|
|
|
|
Turns All Year Trip Reports
(1) Viewing these pages constitutes your acceptance of the Terms of Use.
(2) Disclaimer: the accuracy of information here is unknown, use at your own risk.
(3) Trip Report monthly boards: only actual trip report starts a new thread.
(4) Keep it civil and constructive - that is the norm here. |
|
|
|
|
Author
|
Topic: January 15, 2006 Norse Peak (Read 1032 times)
|
ovrthhills
Member
Offline
Posts: 197
|
My wife and I spent the night at Crystal and slept in, resulting in a rather late 10:00 AM start from mthe base area up the road to the Boullion Basin Trail. The weather was snowing with a stiff NNW wind and temperatures in the low 20's. There was about six inches of new light over Thursday and Friday's heavy snow and rain. We skinned up the road above the Crystal Chapel to the Boullion Basin Trailhead where we followed a well established skin track. The snow was dust on breakable crust at this elevation (4800ft). We took a left track and climbed two steep steps before crossing the creek and regaining the main trail. We left the trail where it enters Boullion Basin and began heading north, switching back up the ridge of the open slope above the prominent rock out croppings.The wind was scouring the ridge and depositing cohesive slabs on the lee sides(SE through SW) of obstacles on a base of water ice. The sun began breaking through, giving great views of the crowds at the resort. All this made for interesting skiing with lots of edging on ice. But we made good progress by hugging the north ridge and reached the 6500 ft saddle above Cement Basin at 12:30 where we dug a pit on a NW facing, 35 degree slope out of the wind. This showed non-cohesive snow down to one foot and no distinct layers down to five feet with good adhesion throughout. Finally got a shear 2.5 ft down on low density snow from Thursday. The time of day and slabby snow observed on SE to SW aspects on the way up made our decision not to ski into Cement or Lake Basin 
We toured North toward Norse peak and began skiing a treed, wind protected West facing slope which had bottomless snow and huge tree wells. In some cases the snow formed narrow bridges between trees which wanted to collapse to either side as we passed through. We kept trending Southwest until the trees opened and we had blissful turns for 1500 ft in boot top fluff over bottomless snow down the north side of the avalanche path above the lower parking lot  . We traversed one at a time across the avalanche slope and regained the trees and eventually the road leading back to the upper east parking lot at 2:00 PM> Beat the traffic home.
All told, a great short tour.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
ron j
TAY Moderator
Offline
Posts: 2459
|
Nice tour.
Way to stay safe and also stay away from the crowds.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
"When I stop having fun I'm turnin' around"
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.” - Niels Bohr
"If a given person makes it a priority not to die in an avalanche, he or she stands a very good chance of living a long, happy life in the mountains." - Jill Fredston
|
|
|
ovrthhills
Member
Offline
Posts: 197
|
Thanks for reading my post and the reply, RonJ. I'll be a lurker no longer.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
ron j
TAY Moderator
Offline
Posts: 2459
|
That's what makes this forum work so well for us all.
Nice to have you aboard. 
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
"When I stop having fun I'm turnin' around"
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.” - Niels Bohr
"If a given person makes it a priority not to die in an avalanche, he or she stands a very good chance of living a long, happy life in the mountains." - Jill Fredston
|
|
|
|
Thank you to our sponsors!
|
Contact turns-all-year.com
Turns All Year Trip Reports ©2001-2010 Turns All Year LLC. All Rights Reserved
The opinions expressed in posts are those of the poster and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Trip Reports administrators or Turns All Year LLC
|
Turns All Year Trip Reports | Powered by SMF 1.0.6.
© 2001-2005, Lewis Media. All Rights Reserved.
|
Page created in 5.183 seconds with 21 queries.
|
