Well, May 6th came along with a nice surprise. Powder!
Snotel was reading about 8-10" on Berthoud Pass. Not ungodly deep but worth checking out.
Headed to a closed area of the pass...
Cody as usual was ready to go.
So we skinned out to Floral Park. One of the few lines I haven't done there is called the Fairway. It's a long avy chute that starts from just above treeline and runs down through the trees to just below the highway. CDOT does blast it from time to time because it can take out the road. For many different reasons I have not gotten out to it over the years. Sunday was a good day to check it out. It has three entrances known as the tee's. The Expert tee (the hardest entrance), the Men's tee, (slightly easier), and the Ladies Tee (for you pussies...). So we went out to the Expert Tee. Looked down the chute hmmm, narrow choke all rocks below it. Alright kewl, it's not in, we'll do the Men's tee. Hmm blown out, a thin strip of snow all rocks at the bottom. Alright Ladies let's go be pussies...
Oliver setting up to take pics at the top of the Ladies Tee.
The terrain around here is pretty cool. Very rough and wild looking when compared to the rest of the Floral Park area.
Cody scoping out the Ladies Tee.
Scott dropped into the chute first. The 10-12" of new snow had not bonded well to the crusty layer underneath, as soon as he entered it all sluffed off. Leaving it for a crappy ski.
Still once you got onto the Fairway proper it was very nice.
Oliver edging his way into the main part of the chute.
That's better
Cody and myself getting after it.
All the rocks behind me lead to the Men's and Pro Tee. They definitely would have left some core shots.
Down in the trees in the avy path the snow got very nice.
We ran out to the highway and were quickly picked up by one of the TGR Maggots, belowzero. He was driving iskibc's truck and we thought it was iski. Turns out belowzero had locked his keys in his car and had to drive to Empire to get a cell signal out to get help. All his gear locked in the car and his ski's locked on the rack. Bummer dude. We put our skins back on and headed out to the Rock Garden off of the Aqueduct.
Oliver heading over the roll lower down in the Rock Garden.
And enjoying it.
Scott had some fun too.
Why do they call it the Rock Garden?
So after a couple of quick hits Scott needed to leave leaving just Oliver and myself to enjoy the snow. We decided to go hit No Name. It's a 12k ft Peak that sit's inbetween Russel and Stanley mountain. It gets completely covered in snow minus a few rocks that poke out. It's also very avy prone and this year with the nasty snowpack I have stayed the hell away. At least until this day, now that we have had some spring consolidation.
So NoName is the white snow covered point in the foreground. With the cornice forming to lookers right. The area under the cornice is known as No Name Cirque and is generally suicidal to run. Not only is it slide prone but that cornice is huge that overlooks it. Cornice collapse could land a school bus on your head. A helmet doesn't do you much good if a bus falls on you...
For scale here is a closer pic with Oliver and Cody in the background.
It is also quite stunning terrain to travel in.
A look back at the Cornice from Oliver's standpoint.
So we get out to No Name and the snow really starts to puke. Just great, can't see shit. We buckled in and waited for about 20 minutes until we got a slight break in the weather. I dropped first.
I took a few shots of Oliver coming down, but the picture quality just wasn't that great.
We get down and then the skies decide to clear a little. At least I could take a pic of the tracks that got laid down that day.
We then skinned back up to Russel dropped the North chute and made our way out. Even though it was fairly tracked, the snow was the most filled and the nicest of the day.
Sorry about the picture quality, but the light was just horrible.
The clouds just kept rolling in and pukin' snow then blue skies would bust in for a few. This pic kind of sums up the entire day.
In all around 4k vert climbed and over 4500 descended. Plenty of good pow, especially considering it was May 6th.
[Edited by Killclimbz on 5/7/2007 at 4:05 PM]
