I got to ski the East Face of the East Twin this morning with Jason Borro, owner of Skimo Co. I have been getting all my stuff from Skimo Co, the best and only ski mountaineering shop in Salt Lake. I've been in there enough that eventually we talked about getting out sometime. Our schedules aligned this morning and it was a great morning. I knew Jason would be way faster than me because he is able to ski more days a week and I knew he'd probably be using race gear. I also knew he'd probably never want to ski again if I slowed him down too much. I made an internal commitment to not let him get ahead of me more than a few steps because I knew if he got a lead on me I would get demoralized and have a hard time getting back in the game. So even though I was dying with the pace he was setting I was able to dig deep and keep up. We knew it was going to be more about the line than the snow today as we had a solid refreeze last night and still cool temps with wind this morning. We were also at the peak around 9 am so we skied very firm snow dodging rocks and frozen avy debris. On the way out we had some good frozen smooth snow skiing and a few crappy breakable crust sections. Overall it was an awesome morning and happy to have another friend to ski with who is way faster and way better at skiing.
Jason booting up to the peak
The views on this ridge are some of my favorite in the Wasatch
West Twin and the valley 6,000 feet below
Beta shot for the next exit out Deaf Smith after the NW couloir
On top of the world
Looking down the East Face
Jason dropping in
Now that I had seen how to get through the rocks I could enjoy some firm conditions in an amazing setting.
Jason entering the lower chute
A painting in time, what you do to a picture when it's not in focus
A better perspective of the line from the top of Tanner's a couple days later, everything always looks way more intense from a distance than it really is. The line we skied is just straight off the top of East Twin through the center chute.
No comments:
Post a Comment