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.