The alpine had been quite for the last week with few visitors due to stormy weather and great snow. Today the sun decided it was going to play in full force, so seeing out window Grady Mellin, Alex Arnis, and myself decided to head out and see what we could do. The plan was to go up to Thunder Mountain, to look at Coalpit Headwall and the Hypodermic Needle. We knew there had been some wind and it was going to get hot so we had some decisions to make.
Sunrise looking up LCC
With a 4:30 wake up call we dropped a car mid canyon and proceeded to start our dark, chilly tour from the White Pine trailhead. Making good time we powered over to Maybird as the sun starting poking out. We skinned and booted up the the Hogum Divide and where greeted with the zone of big lines.
Grady gearing up with the Hyponoodle in the back.
We saw a couple parties ahead of us on the Needle but knew we could get some good turns before then.
Alex waist deep in cream down the 200.
Grady in the first couple of a couple hundred.
Anotha from Grady.
After a dream of cream, we slapped skins and helmets on and prepared ourselves for a lot of switch backs in the belly of the beast skinning up the Needle.
Alex doing a little trail breakage.
All day I thought wind slabs where going to be our problem, but as we walked back into the sun, the heat was going to be the issue. On some of the high south rocks we noticed some snow breaking loose and knew time was of the essence. With lots of talking about conditions we made our way up. We skinned to the base of the the Needle couloir then walked across a hanging snowfield. We finally gained the ridge which was relieving to be out of the big exposure.
Looking into the Coalpit Headwall.
Booting up the ridge was a cool bit, straight forward with a couple steep parts.
Alex on a mellow part.
Then, we got to the top on a mellow bluebird day and the views where unreal.
If you look closely some savages skies the NE of Lone.
Really glad to not be on that one right now after last years escapade.
Now descent time. We traversed over to the chute, it had been skied by a couple people and as any ski mountaineering day goes, we realized the skiing was going to be bad and steep.
It was about 150ft of sidestepping on ice over rocks until we could make our first full value kick turn of a lifetime. After some more of that I made to a safe zone and had the boys come down.
Me on the steeps before the choke.
Alex doing a spicy move.
Grady getting over the rocks as a cloud tickled us.
The fun wasn't over and we proceeded down, as it got a little wider we where able to get into the flow of proper steep skiing hop turns.
Grady lettin' it buck.
Alex is down the somewhere.
After getting out the the cooly we had some fun apron skiing with a mix of hot and cold pow. Our legs where feeling at this point.
Gray among giants.
After getting down we chatted with some other folks and let our legs recover for a second and admired our work above.
Looks mellow from down here...
We then exited Hogum and found some really good mellow pow before a bushwhack, rather wet creek crossing, and skied down the bike trail!
An amazing day all around with some deep, steep, decisions, and tired legs.
Look at that smile.
A happy me.
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