If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again? A bit obsessed with this line by now, Courtney and I went back for a second attempt Sunday morning.
A truly spectacular morning to be in the mountains watching the sun rise and light up bits and pieces of clouds and sky.
We are lucky to live and play here.
Here Courtney skins past slope after slope of perfectly good powder on his way to ski what is essentially a side step, traverse and rappel. WTF?
Just a pleasure to be here.
Ummm, yeah, let's go ski that? Gulp!
Gorgeous day out with a bit of sun and a light wind. Much nicer than a few days ago.
Great views in every direction, this is Box Elder to the South.
We were both feeling good about conditions until about this point. A little wind pocket pulled near the summit and spooked us.
One of the spicier Wasatch lines I've had the ass puckering pleasure to look down!
Unfortunately our story stops here, or at least doesn’t continue down the objective we were intending. With just a few too many signs of snow instability (naturals lower on the East face, small human triggered on the approach, large amount of snowfall in the past few days, high winds and soaring temps) we couldn’t justify dropping in. None of these conditions were a real surprise, but we thought we would come check it out again because you never really know until you go.
We kicked a huge cornice off the South ridge and worked the SE ridge which was fun.
Yes, it is frustrating to get shut down again, but lines like this are sketchy enough in perfect conditions. Live to ski another day. We’ll be back for round #3. I’m heading to Haines to film and ski for 2 weeks. We’ll see what it looks like when I get back.