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We felt like Turkey for Easter. So we went to Turkey Chute, a line HFT and MountainDog did last year for Silverton Splitfest. Stability has been improving every day for the last week, where we have been seeing a constant moderate avy danger. It was enough for us to say, lets go for it. The conditions were pretty good, not rip-able pow, but good stable edgeable snow. I'll take it! Just in time for Silverton Splitfest!

The tour was a little bit of a junkshow. We started off taking the wrong road a few hundred vert while cmarechal stayed on the right track. He ended up thinking he was trying to catch us, when the reverse was happening. So we put in a pretty big pace up the road trying to catch him catching us, and ended up going too far up the road where we had to bushwack it into the basin.

And then the skinning in the basin was borderline brutality. Fell a few times off the skin track, tried booting for a bit, switched back to skinning. Made me want hardboots and Phantoms. Skatebananas heal riser broke but his ninja skills let him skin the whole time up it. But we pushed on and were well rewarded. When all was said and done, the tour ended up being around 4.5K, 6.5 miles and 6.5 hours car to car.

In the basin, after a crappy skin up, Skatebananas gets some food with potential in the background.


cmarechal pushing out the basin skin


Haven't had to boot in a while, felt good!


Grendiers looming in the back


Run 1, views were awesome!




The Turkey Chute, Huge walls, I need a wide angle lens! SkateBananas


cmarechal


The walls on this were massive, and very aesthetic.


Happy Easter!

Such a fun loop. Here's a couple pics from last year's Splitfest for snow depth references:

Top of the first chute, with the notch of Turkey Chute in the background


The first chute


Turkey Chute


Looks like there's a little better base this year.

I think the biggest difference to last year is the dust layer. Last year I think we had 3 dust layers by this time, and this year, I have yet to see one, or it is very small if its there. Red Mountain snotel read 45 inches on 3/31/12 last year and 53 on 3/31/13. The snow rapidly decreased last year due to the dust, and seems to be sticking better this year. The next few days is calling for snow, which should be good for maintaining snowpack, and I've heard rumblings of an active April for weather, so lets hope! I'd like to get into May this year, which didn't happen last year.

Thanks Jason... Looks like there may be a pretty good storm lining up to freshen things up for Splitfest.
See ya next week.