Dec. 31, 2012 w/ Justin (stein)

Last turns of 2012 and they were awesome! The base of the slope was only 5 mins from the car.

After one lap on the normal slopes, we decided to take a closer look at the couloir.

It was relatively small, straight, not too steep, little/no overhead hazard, good run out, and overall very stable conditions, so it was looking good.

We set a steep uptrack right to the mouth of the couloir and took the time to dig a pit. With no unexpected results to scare us off, we started the tedious boot pack up the couloir.

We made it about 100 vertical meters up and began to notice a 10 cm thick crust overlying sugary snow, so we strapped in at that point, about halfway up.

Slightly crusty in the couloir, but awesome powder down below. So good that we came back up to our pit location for a third lap.

3 runs, ~800 m vertical, 8 km

A few more pics and hi-res of those above here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/powrider_kevsauer/sets/72157632400918353/with/8333390733/

Here’s hoping for much more safe and plentiful powder in the new year!