May 31, 2003, Birthday Tour

still about a foot of snow at the TH, skinned under partly cloudy skies to the col, cornice easily passed on the left, and to our surprise found madison avenue socked in...

lucky for us, as we were settling down for a long wait to wait for clearing skies, some locals came up and we followed them. they had an 11 and a 12 year old with them, very brave kids and excellent skiers! great to see kids happily bc skiing! good snow, if mushy, with bad visibility but very happy turns.

as soon as we reached the notch where you drop towards in the kangaroo drainage, the weather got sunny and clear...we could see a large patch of ground and when skiing down realized it was caused by a slide which had gone all the way down to the ground...100 feet wide and about 3 feet tall crown. and it didn't look all that old...the snow here was quite a bit mushier and not as much fun to ski.

back at the hairpin turn, we decided to boot up the couloir back towards the col - which was in excellent skiing condition - saw a number of climbers of south early winters spire, and were rewarded with clear skies and beautiful scenery up top.

we were happy to have gotten an early start, as we kept hearing big stuff falling on the south facing slopes later in the day...