Sunshine Backcountry

I fear that ski season is ending soon.

There have been a lot of cyclists on the road recently, and while there are always the wackos who will bike regardless of the weather (I even know a few), I have to admit that thoughts of sliding on snow are hard to maintain given all the dirt and rocks being revealed.

I was hoping that there would still be a bit of powder left in the Sunshine backcountry, so I braved the knuckledraggers and skinned up the ski-out to the main lodge. The bottom portion was refrozen corduroy, which was terrible for the fishscales, so the skins came on near the bend in the gondola path.

A view of Delirium Dive from the base of Goat Mountain

The plan was to do one lap on Delirium Dive, then go up to Twin Cairns, and finally ski back to the car. However, phase one of that plan was thwarted due to the absolutely terrible conditions on the uptrack along Angel Traverse. I did not have any crampons, and the World Cup Downhill run was wind-scoured crust. Bleh.

Back at the lodge, I met up with Aki to have lunch (she had a lift ticket and was skiing the resort in the morning), and then we set off for Twin Cairns.

Beyond the resort boundary, coming up on Twin Cairns

The wind was brutal on this side as well, as we skinned up below the Standish chair lift, then angled right towards the resort boundary. However, for whatever reason, some snow still lingered in places and we were not swept away.

We made our way to a rocky outcrop below the summit and decided to deskin. Ski conditions were not great, and they would likely be worse the closer to the ridge top we got, so we figured this was good enough.

View from our high point on Twin Cairns

The ski back to the resort was better than expected, as long as you sought out the pockets of powder amidst the bulletproof crust. The wind at our backs also made for easy progress across the flats.

The ski-out had gone beyond corn into slush, with a couple of potholes filled with water to navigate. I'm not sure it's going to remain open for much longer, at which point people will have to take the gondola down, which seems kind of pointless. Then again, I've hiked into areas just to get a couple of turns, so maybe it's not so unreasonable after all.

I'm still in a bit of denial about the end of ski season, so I won't be putting storage wax on all the skis yet.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/182564741/3101909