We knew that a couple of days in the high teens would make things interesting in the alpine. I wasn't expecting much from a trip to Tent Ridge, other than being able to scout it out for next season.
We got to the trailhead around 8am and found another car already there. The overnight freeze had made the trail quite hard in spots, but once we got a bit higher things softened up.
The uptracks made by the other party were heading towards the eastern end of Tent Ridge. Even though we wanted the northern end, we followed these tracks as the terrain was a bit hilly and not that obvious.
Once we broke out of the trees, our route was much clearer. We also saw the party of two as they were making their way up for their second run. They must have gotten to the trailhead an hour before us.
As we traversed out onto the north side, there were signs of cornice failures, with one causing a slab release that had run into the trees. Maybe a size 1 or 1.5. It looked like it might have occurred the day before. This had me a bit spooked, and we decided not to go much higher.
The snow wasn't that great. The top 10cm or so was dense, which was fine, but below that was a breakable crust that mostly held (but sometimes didn't). Maybe the guys on the east aspect had it better ... they were probably on corn / slush.
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| Striking a pose |
In any case, we skied back down to the trees, where I felt a bit safer and we then had lunch. On the way out, the hilly nature of the terrain confused us for a while, and the plethora of old tracks seemed to lead in many random directions. We eventually found our way to the road, but had somehow overshot our uptracks.
Next time, a bit more of a thorough exploration of the area will be necessary. The trails are not that obvious, and the dips in the terrain along with the dense trees made for awkward routefinding.
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