Early January Berthoud

Dobish throwing down on a windlip

So after last weeks harrowing adventure, and with the weekend approaching I had two goals, 1. I still wanted to get out and go touring and 2. I wanted to do it with a super safe group and in a place I felt comfortable in, so when Dobish asked if I wanted to head to Berthoud for some Saturday turns, I gladly accepted.
So after having waged a battle with the hordes of January Front Range Skiers (often times the most dangerous part of backcountry skiing in the Front Range, and denying a car lap to a group of skiers and snowboarders sans Avy gear (typical procedure of mine and another reason I sometimes seem to avoid Berthoud) we arrived at the top parking lot around 10ish or so and headed up for a quick lap in Floral park on a beautiful Saturday morning. Fifteen minutes or so later, we were at the top of the descent and shooting down into the perfectly pitching tree laps that is Floral Park. While not exactly sublime and yielding snow, it was variable and soft enough in some spots that it made all the work worth it, and for fifteen minutes of work followed by about 1,000 feet of descent, OK I'll bite.

Fritz enjoying the amazing lack of wind up in Current Creek

Next up, we headed up the west side with the intention of skiing Meadows to the upper 90s. Meadows was slightly wind affected, while the 90s was slightly tracked, however we found some killer snow to be had in patches. It's a shame sometimes that a place like Berthoud pass is so well known, if no one else knew about it, we would have had untouched pow for weeks to ourselves! The snow still was light soft and fluffy in some areas and deep enough to make the Bibby's very happy. We skied about halfway down Triple Chute and I stopped in the middle of the run to shoot Dobish, cutting a new line on the far skier's right chute.



Tree skiing!
Artist's talk about suffering for their art, and I do have to say that I'd imagine very few of them know the sensation of getting a huge pow shot right in the face for their photography. Which is exactly what happened to me after the last two shots.
Having skied the 90s we decided to head back up the 110s to see if there was any leftover goods from the earlier week's storm.
This particular location of Berthoud holds a special place in my heart. It's one of the first places that Brandon and I ever toured up 3 years ago after our on snow Avalanche Safety class with FOBP () and one of my first memories of feeling your lungs about to burst with the effort of the climb up a windswept peak and being rewarded with knee deep untracked powder down the pitch and not another soul in sight. They don't call the area Perfect Trees just because it's meadow skipping at it's very best. It's the kind of mellow, sublime tree skiing, that every turn seems to trigger a serenity deep in the skiers soul and in a place that sometimes can be accused of having lost it's soul when too many people found it, well, it's a good reminder that sometimes stoke from your home can be the best.
Up at the top we stopped for a well deserved lunch, Fritz had decided to break out the jetboil and several ready made soups, which were much enjoyed by all.



Ramen is awesome says the Dobish and the Hilary!

Perfect trees was sun soaked and powdery, fresh and yet dappled with bits of sun kisses on it's mellow slope. In other words, it skied really, really good. And asides from a miscommunication between Dobish and myself regarding skier vs. photographer, it was excellent.
At the bottom of perfect trees the pitch steepens and goes over a cliff band, where we found recent evidence of two skier triggered slides, a reminder that the avalanche dragon is constantly lurking, even on a bluebird day that seems like nothing can go wrong. Fritz dived right in to check out the scene, while the three of us remained on watch. Once he had ascertained that the tension had been relieved in the slope, the three of us came over to check out the findings. You could see that the slope had slid on the icey basal layer and that the skier had triggered it by skiing over a rollover and hitting a weak spot that had collapsed the snowpack.


Dobish and Fritz investigating the crown
Notice the track at the feet of my shadow, that's the day or two old track of the person who had skied the slope that had triggered the slide. You could see in the turn that there was a rock just out of site of the camera where the shallow point had been hit. Classic low snowpack weakness point. Asides from a reminder that the avalanche dragon is still lurking, I have to say I felt very, very sorry for whoever went for this ride, as all there was below it was rocks and trees. It could not have felt good.
After scoping the scene to it's fullest extent and picking the safest line we could find down the adjacent slope, accompanied by some very spooky whoomphing, we skied out to the parking lot (after Hillary lost her ski for a good 5 minutes or so and had a crash course in skiing on one ski) and back up to the top of the pass.
It was awesome to go back to a place that had so ignited my love of backcountry skiing after having such a scary occurence in the backcountry the week before. It reminded me why I take the risk of leaving the resort and venturing out into the unknown, other than just having a bad memory and high tolerance for pain. It reminded me of the beauty of the natural world away further away from humanity and the camraderie that the folks who venture into the backcountry share. It also reminded me how good ramen can taste when you've really earned it.

January 5th: Close Call

Last week,I had a rare Tuesday and Wednesday off and Chris and I had decided to take advantage of the day by heading to a local stash for some low angle pow skiing. Granted the avy danger in the Front Range has been beyond scary these last few weeks, but going with the usual adage of staying below treeline and on low angle terrain we pretty much figured we'd be safe.
We got to the trailhead around 9ish, and began the moderate skin in, pausing to use our compasses and orient ourselves as to what aspects we were in the midst of. The first part of this skin in is a pretty mellow tour which steepens dramatically when you get about half way up the gulch. Having worked our way up to just about treeline and a wonderful grove of trees that I'm now going to refer to as the Hacienda, due to their extreme comfort we transitioned from tour mode to ski mode, wolfed down some snacks and headed off, getting more and more excited about the powder we were to ski. From this point the plan was to do a long traverse over to our chosen line, a little tree shot that had an angle of around low 30 degrees or so.
During this ski we decided very much so to play the buddy game, because there were some larger paths above us that were very concerning, so we went one at a time, moving from tree grove to tree grove. In retrospect, I remember skiing over these low angle areas and hearing a distinct hollow sound coming from the snowpack beneath us. It concerned me, not so much because we were on such low angle terrain, however this sound now is deeply ingrained in my memory.
We were about 50 feet from our chosen line and ducking out of one last tree grove to another when all of a sudden I heard a huge WHOOMPH, and the whole slope lowered beneath me. I saw a crack shoot out 15 feet in front of me, and heard Chris shout my name, and suddenly every thing started to move. I remember having 2 thoughts: 1)This can't be happening, and 2)I'm still standing up I need to ski out of this right now.
Skiing out of it (and praying every foot of the way) I turned around and instantly started yelling Chris' name as I'd lost track of him, he instantly responded from the grove of trees that we had just recently called our safe zone and where a bunch of huge avy blocks were now piled up. He was fine, he'd gone for about a 20 foot ride and was more than slightly shaken up, but other than that fine.
We took stock of our situation, took some pictures and decided to retreat to the bar.
So in further retrospect, what do I think happened?
Some shots of the aftermath:

The windlip that created the rollover and that the whole slope ripped out from, notice the cracks continuing to the left.


A shot from down at the ground, above the line that we had hoped to ski, once again, notice the cracks.


Chris crossing over to me and a thicker line of trees, notice the size of the blocks of debris and the obvious evidence of a hard slab on top of soft slab.

First off, I think that the hollow noise I spoke of above, should be paid attention to no matter WHAT terrain level your on, and I know that now. 2. Even though we were traversing extremely mellow terrain, the one thing that we both missed was that during our traverse, we mistakenly crossed a slope that rolled over into a steeper degree (after the fact we measured the slope that we were crossing and it was a prime 35 degrees, primo avy terrain, when the slope we had been on seconds before could not have been greater than 28). 3. I think that we missed these things because we were lulled into a false sense of security being that there were so many trees around.
So what has this taught me?
Biggest of all, I've found myself paying extreme attention to any rollovers that I've found in the backcountry and paying extreme attention to any sound that the snow makes. For example, yesterday at Loveland, during the opening of chair 8, I skied over a windloaded area that was making that hollow noise and even though I was in bounds I still felt my avy sense rise.
In retrospect, I'm extremely glad that this happened, neither of us was hurt we learned from the mistakes and besides from a nightmare here and there (I woke up saturday night, because I'd had a nightmare of the sound that the slope made before it ripped) all I am is wiser from this. You can read about things in books, take classes, but theres nothing that gets your instinct going like experiencing something first hand. Mom and Dad, if your reading this, I promise we were being safe, and from now on I know what mistakes to look for. It's pretty textbook avy safety that happened, it's not the big slopes that will kill you, it's the little ones. It did take me about a week to get up the gumption to write this blog post because I wanted to make sure that I had all the details and life lessons included. Be safe out there, and frankly, I'm going to be doing some serious meadow skipping until this bottom layer sends itself out.

Post New Year's Touring

After a pretty crappy New Year's Eve and Day (read: drank too much and felt like crap the next day), I managed to tag along with few friends that were heading to CENSORED location (censored to protect the powder stash) for a post new year's day tour. It was a surprisingly hefty group, 10 people, which is way larger than I'd usually tour with so, we moved pretty slowly, but considering the trade was about 5500 feet of powder turns in a brand new area, I was ok with it. The crew consisted of Gary, Chris, Lauren, Mike, Mel, Tom, Ed, Pete and a few others whose names have either slipped my mind or I didn't find out. Huge group, so especially considering the Avy Danger was at pockets of high on all aspects, we decided to stick to very low angle trees. We skinned up an east ridgeline that took us over complete and utter wind hammered and directly into treeline where I'll let some of the pictures speak for what we found.

Mike diving in...


and finding solace in every turn!
The snow was wonderful! It was deep, light, fluffy and totally untracked. It was the kind of hero tree skiing where the faster you go the better and better that it feels and suddenly your just ripping through the trees leaving beautiful trenches of depth behind you. Sweet.


Plotting about more powder..


Testing the avalung...
On a scary note, at the bottom of our first run we found a test slope and dug a quick pit, which failed on an R1 of the Rutschblock test (for those uninitiated I stepped lightly onto the isolated block and the whole top layer slid).
Exploring a new section of mountains, so close to home and yet so similar, always has a soulful aspect to it. I hadn't toured in close to a week and a half and it always amazes me how much I enjoy the movement through the mountains.