Out with a bang! 06 Holidaze @ Snoqualmie
1/6/07
WA Snoqualmie Pass
2235
0
Embrace the Transience
During a little over two hours' touring on light XC gear on New Year's day, fat snowflake clusters turned to small clear ice pellets and then to a hypercooled mist that laid down a quarter inch breakable ice crust. But on the heavily stomped trails of the Gold Creek Snow Carnival, our waxless skis kept their kick and glide to the end. We needed to keep moving to avoid going hypothermic. Scraping the hard ice off the van at the end of the tour marked the close of a wonderful holday snow cycle. I reflected on the past.
The day before, full from top-to-bottom of "stale powder" that skied as well as stuff I've flown into BC huts for. We were exploring a tour we'd pioneered (in our own "personal discovery zone" at least...) a few years before, and finding significantly more ski lines than we'd found on previous trips. Within quick reach of a major metropolis, we had our own vast powder stash that looked like it could support us for several more days of clear weather and easterly flow. The joy of mystery and disovery replaced by the comfort of knowledge and abundance. To get one, I had to let go of the other. And yet, from a new vantage point on the ridge crest, we spied a nearby peaklet cloaked in a couple-thousand-foot-high white robe that warranted some exploration on another day...
The day before that at a nearby spot, again finding fantastic turns from the ridge crest to the trailhead. This time, we were working a tour I've probably done over fifty times, tuning the uptrack for efficiency, and working the terrain to find the calmest snow pockets. Yet we managed to try out a new 700 foot shot through very steep (for us!) and open mature forest. I thought back to many past trips, to the now departed four-legged buddy who joined us for the tours in which we worked out how to have fun in various types of snow conditions, to the open areas that are no longer skiable due to growing small trees, to the days when we rarely saw other skiers en route here. After a while enjoying our high point, another party caught up with us, having zigged and zagged since two hours before we left our car. I felt like I was seeing myself years back. As we left the high point at about 3, we looked out at the warm low sunlight casting mountain shadows into a sea of flowing fog. These are the moments that stick in our minds for years, that give us the motivation to come back even in far lesser conditions. A bit over an hour later, we were far below with large smiles on our faces.
Two days before that, we were on that same mountain after a day of dumping. The trailbreaking was work, but not awful. A good sign for the trip back down. Two thirds of the way up, I caught two guys I'd seen there before and offered to take the lead. They gratefully accepted my offer. We talked a bit - they have skied this tour for about twenty years. It became clear that we had each made some similar and some different conclusions about the best ways to ascend and descend. It was fun to compare notes, including remembering how different some parts of the tour were a decade ago. The wind was driving a plume of snow over our heads as we rested at our high point. But in this period just after the storm, the snow was still soft everywhere. We joyously skied slopes that had surfaces like cardboard boxes two days later. It was fun to farm the snow that I knew would be useless to me if I returned in a day or two.
Thanks to a corporate "use it or lose it" vacation policy, my vacation started on the day of the big windstorm. A buddy and I got up to ride the lifts during the wet part of the storm (before the winds took the power out, but exactly while my road drain was clogging up with hard-driven gravel and melon-sized rocks). The upper lift at Alpental was closed for our first few runs, and just as we were feeling that the new snow was rather skied out, the upper lift opened, and we skied several runs of almost entirely untracked snow on the Edelweiss side. Between that day and my day of trailbreaking, we fit in another great mountain tour, a mountain tour where we were surprised by much-higher-than-predicted snow levels and thus much heavy turning, and three days of soft and quiet XC touring. I spent several days in Darkland, and a few more on the Darkland/Brightland border. We all shifted our perspectives a bit, not being able to rely on our familiar technologies for a few days, and somehow finding that it was OK.
Other than an Xmas visit to friends in Idaho and some nearby touring, we were able to sate ourselves at snowcrummy pass. All the while, I knew that we were lucking out, and that it would not be this way every holiday. I knew that the mature forest we were skiing would likely be quite similar in twenty years, but that some of the open areas would be choked off by growing evergreens - that we'd need to keep tuning the route. That some partners will keep skiing with me for years, and that some more will depart and some new ones will join in. That todays great views will be tomorrow's whiteout. That more people will discover these tours, and some will move on. And that the snow that's good today may not be tomorrow, or even in two hours.
Somehow, I found myself embracing the transience inherent in our sport in a way I'd never quite understood before. I pined for the past, and relished the both what I have now and what I've lost.
Now that's a good vacation!
During a little over two hours' touring on light XC gear on New Year's day, fat snowflake clusters turned to small clear ice pellets and then to a hypercooled mist that laid down a quarter inch breakable ice crust. But on the heavily stomped trails of the Gold Creek Snow Carnival, our waxless skis kept their kick and glide to the end. We needed to keep moving to avoid going hypothermic. Scraping the hard ice off the van at the end of the tour marked the close of a wonderful holday snow cycle. I reflected on the past.
The day before, full from top-to-bottom of "stale powder" that skied as well as stuff I've flown into BC huts for. We were exploring a tour we'd pioneered (in our own "personal discovery zone" at least...) a few years before, and finding significantly more ski lines than we'd found on previous trips. Within quick reach of a major metropolis, we had our own vast powder stash that looked like it could support us for several more days of clear weather and easterly flow. The joy of mystery and disovery replaced by the comfort of knowledge and abundance. To get one, I had to let go of the other. And yet, from a new vantage point on the ridge crest, we spied a nearby peaklet cloaked in a couple-thousand-foot-high white robe that warranted some exploration on another day...
The day before that at a nearby spot, again finding fantastic turns from the ridge crest to the trailhead. This time, we were working a tour I've probably done over fifty times, tuning the uptrack for efficiency, and working the terrain to find the calmest snow pockets. Yet we managed to try out a new 700 foot shot through very steep (for us!) and open mature forest. I thought back to many past trips, to the now departed four-legged buddy who joined us for the tours in which we worked out how to have fun in various types of snow conditions, to the open areas that are no longer skiable due to growing small trees, to the days when we rarely saw other skiers en route here. After a while enjoying our high point, another party caught up with us, having zigged and zagged since two hours before we left our car. I felt like I was seeing myself years back. As we left the high point at about 3, we looked out at the warm low sunlight casting mountain shadows into a sea of flowing fog. These are the moments that stick in our minds for years, that give us the motivation to come back even in far lesser conditions. A bit over an hour later, we were far below with large smiles on our faces.
Two days before that, we were on that same mountain after a day of dumping. The trailbreaking was work, but not awful. A good sign for the trip back down. Two thirds of the way up, I caught two guys I'd seen there before and offered to take the lead. They gratefully accepted my offer. We talked a bit - they have skied this tour for about twenty years. It became clear that we had each made some similar and some different conclusions about the best ways to ascend and descend. It was fun to compare notes, including remembering how different some parts of the tour were a decade ago. The wind was driving a plume of snow over our heads as we rested at our high point. But in this period just after the storm, the snow was still soft everywhere. We joyously skied slopes that had surfaces like cardboard boxes two days later. It was fun to farm the snow that I knew would be useless to me if I returned in a day or two.
Thanks to a corporate "use it or lose it" vacation policy, my vacation started on the day of the big windstorm. A buddy and I got up to ride the lifts during the wet part of the storm (before the winds took the power out, but exactly while my road drain was clogging up with hard-driven gravel and melon-sized rocks). The upper lift at Alpental was closed for our first few runs, and just as we were feeling that the new snow was rather skied out, the upper lift opened, and we skied several runs of almost entirely untracked snow on the Edelweiss side. Between that day and my day of trailbreaking, we fit in another great mountain tour, a mountain tour where we were surprised by much-higher-than-predicted snow levels and thus much heavy turning, and three days of soft and quiet XC touring. I spent several days in Darkland, and a few more on the Darkland/Brightland border. We all shifted our perspectives a bit, not being able to rely on our familiar technologies for a few days, and somehow finding that it was OK.
Other than an Xmas visit to friends in Idaho and some nearby touring, we were able to sate ourselves at snowcrummy pass. All the while, I knew that we were lucking out, and that it would not be this way every holiday. I knew that the mature forest we were skiing would likely be quite similar in twenty years, but that some of the open areas would be choked off by growing evergreens - that we'd need to keep tuning the route. That some partners will keep skiing with me for years, and that some more will depart and some new ones will join in. That todays great views will be tomorrow's whiteout. That more people will discover these tours, and some will move on. And that the snow that's good today may not be tomorrow, or even in two hours.
Somehow, I found myself embracing the transience inherent in our sport in a way I'd never quite understood before. I pined for the past, and relished the both what I have now and what I've lost.
Now that's a good vacation!
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