Jan, 19 2009
Original plan was to take the devils backbone to baldy peak and ski the bowl. Friend forgot his crampons, so we decided to do the ski hut trail.
First views of the Baldy bowl and we lost all motivation and decided to go to the ski area lifts, hoping to find some soft backcountry off thunder or telegraph.
Made a run outside the ski area boundary down the east side of thunder. A few turns on corn, but mostly ice.
It was a steep scramble out:
Made a few run on resort. Only two of the runs off the Thunder Mt lift had good enough conditions to ski, despite the good coverage and warm temps.
Hopefully Baldy is making money from the snow play/tube crowd.
Still hoping to find some backcountry corn we took another run and didn't find anything very good.
If conditions are better this would be fun:
Finally decided to skin up closed chair 4 because things looked thin but soft. And how many times can you ski the same 2 lift served runs?
While taking our skins off at the start of the Devils back bone, I watched a lady slip and just about fall face first down the almost blue ice covered north slope near the location of the red dot in the photo below:
I asked her about it when she got to us and she didn't seem rattled...I guess ignorance is bliss. She did mention that snow shoes would be nice and I said I think you want crampons. Although they wouldn't work with her trail running shoes.
Evidence that even lame stuff can be interesting if sequenced:
Where did that come from?
Hopefully we get more snow soon!
