Apr 25, 2018, South Couloir of the North Twin

Been working a stupid amount and was getting restless so Michael and I schemed a plan to sneak out and catch hopefully corn snow during the big warm up.

We had big ambitions, but the trip turned out to be a bit of a comedy of errors which we managed to both enjoy thoroughly.

Started pushing bikes up the road at 8:30 pm after rushing out the door after work. Got 20 minutes up before realizing I forgot my poles. Almost biked back to the car without my keys but luckily Michael said something.

Made it to camp at 3k snowline at 10:30 and i realized I forgot a sleeping pad and Michael realized he forgot his skins!! We decided to rachet back our plans to an exploratory mission and see how far cedar bows ski strapped to the bottom of skis could take us.



Stuck to our 4 am wake up assuming things would be mush early and that we'd need more time to get to where we could hopefully boot.

The approach to the valley between the north twin and south twin involves a fair amount of alder shwacking and creek crossing that was slow going. Michael's set up "worked" but the frequent slip outs must have been exhausting!

As we got into old growth and under the north twin we found a thick breakable crust over the shaded slope. Steeper slopes weren't viable for cedar bows and booting was DEEP post holing. Michael encouraged me to go ahead and explore the upper zone while everything was still locked up and safe and we agreed on a mtg point.

I ended up getting under the south couloir by 9 am and found it to still have a strong surface crust so I decided to climb up as long as the snow was right.



There was a surprisingly large runnel in the chute that I stayed away from and watched occasional pebble to golf ball size ice bits bounce down as they fell off the warming rock.

Booting was good but the first choke that was in the shade required fairly hard kicking to get a full solid step into. I made it almost to the top and found a crux that required crossing the runnel to pass. The opposite side was pretty chunky and had just been in the shade. As I debated whether it would be soft enough to ski while the rest wasn't too soft bigger chunks started to fall down the runnel so I decided to just turn around there. I was Bummed to be so close to a summit that has eluded me and turn around but felt good making the safe decision.







Ended up timing the descent perfectly dropping at 10 am. Upper steep section held suprisingly good corn for in reality being only a few inch thick crust that was encasing lots of mush that was likely to move that afternoon.

The crux I climbed through ended up being a slightly puckering narrow side slip on a double fall line down the chute and into the runnel, but it was just soft enough to hold good edging. Was happy with my decision to not attempt the upper crux after getting through that one.

Beneath that it was smooth sailing with good corn in the center and over ripe on the more easterly wall of the chute, and then ripper corn on the low angle apron back to where I found Michael hanging in the sun.

In good spirits and happy to be in the mountains we worked our way through mushy forest and alder choked logging road until we got to enjoy sunny road walking back to our bikes.

When we got back to camp we found Michael's bike had a flat tire! Decided to ride it anyways rather than walk out and then realized halfway down that we had forgotten our beers in the creek by our camp! Doh!

Dipped in the middle fork and basked in the sun before returning to the city and more work.. Excited to get out again soon!



I usually make videos of ski adventures and don't usually write so this was a fun change in storytelling medium. If you want more fun ski stories check out TheSnowTroopers.com