Frozen Death Cookies on Shadow Peak

Randosteve tries to stay out of the refrozen debris
in the South Couloir of Shadow Peak.

I’ve been getting out the past couple days. On Wednesday I was on a solo mission scoping out some lines, but only skied Turkey Chute. It was mostly boiler plate.I skied Turkey Chute and it was pretty darn wind effected. Some of the lines I’ve been checking out recently are very wind hammered, while others look like they have been effected by the sun quite a bit. Hopefully we will either get some decent snow out of this punch, or it will just get sunny again and soften some of the crust out there.

Through a icy steeper section.

And do I mean crust. Yesterday I went up Shadow Peak with Bryan Feinstein and skied some very icy snow down the South Couloir into Avalanche Canyon. It looked like someone had skied it a day or two before and had kicked off some sloughs…leaving frozen debris around every corner. We were hoping for more snow accumulation overnight, but the couple inches that we did get wasn’t enough to cover up the death cookies.

Bryan hunts for smooth snow.

Since we didn’t approach via the line we skied, we entered the couloir from above without knowing the snow conditions. Sometimes this can bite you…like today…but luckily the couloir isn’t too steep and committing, giving us the confidence that we would be able to manage almost anything…sans water ice. Actually the snow did have a bluish tint to it…making me double take whet we were skiing a couple times.

Anyway, a good day of skiing the old dust on crust…or ‘Delta-Charlie’ as an old friend would often say and my knees are feeling the effects of the rattle. Looking to get out today. Tough to call what the weather is going to bring the next few days, but at least it looks like we probably won’t lose much snow over the next week…which bodes well for spring tours. Yee Ha!!