2-28-06 High avalanche day

Feb 28th 2006

I had a late start after a busy morning doing stuff. I finally left by 10:40 am. Joe and Delaney left at 8 am and I was going to hook up with them.

I finally hooked up with Joe and Delaney and the word on the street was really deep snow. Waist deep to be exact.

The sun came out and we decided to rip an Alpine line. The avalanche danger was high but we could not help but check it out. Delaney did a ski cut and the entire slope ripped 60 cm deep. The avalanche swept down the slope and filled up the lower valley with a mist of snow.

The usual pick up spot was underneath 10 feet of snow. Luckily i was watching from the ridge above.
After the slide the weather moved in and we decided that the trees would be a better place to play today.

The tree run had amazing quality snow and no slide activity.

Delaney was ski touring so he stayed on top of the crust as he hiked up and out.

Joe and I had snow shoes and poles but still were Post holing up to our knees. The hike back to the snowmobiles ended up taking an hour and forty minutes. We were switching back and forth breaking trail. It was a walk in the park for the second guy. The guy in the fronts every step required a push down effort to break down to the bottom layer. It felt like doing a lunge every step.


Joe had a meeting to get to and was in a hurry. He left as soon as we got to the snowmobiles. Delaney and I played around for a bit (After getting my snowmobile unstuck again) and took off home in the sunsett.