freeheelin'

I love skiing. Last week I had the great fortune to spend four days backcountry skiing in the Asulkan Valley with my good friend and fellow telemark skier, jt. The conditions were perfect - snow on the way in followed by three days of blue skies. The trip in took longer than it should have due to my poor route-finding skills. (I should have read the route description before heading in.) No matter.

Day 2 started like day 1 ended - thick clouds and swirling snow. We slept late and ate a slow breakfast waiting to see what the weather would do. The general mood in the hut was to climb Young's Peak but no one was eager to break trail through thigh-deep snow. The clouds slowly thinned and the snow gradually slowed until two strong skiers from Alaska made the move and set a track up Young's. We followed shortly thereafter. We decided not to follow the Alaskans up the headwall; they ended up triggering a size 2 avalanche on their trip down. Instead we skied face-shot turns on the lower slopes until the sun sank below the surrounding peaks.

Day 3 was bluebird. Jt developed some bad blisters from his rental boots and decided to take a day off. I tagged along with a couple of Quebecois to make turns on the seven steps of paradise. It was paradise. We made two laps and I was done.

Day 4 was our last. We packed our bags and headed down the valley to the top of the mousetrap. We left our extra gear with Pierre, who injured his arm on the trip down, and we began the ascent to sapphire col. It was a beautiful day for a ski and the view of loop brook from sapphire col was spectacular. The trip down was also spectacular until we hit the sun crust at the bottom. That was just ugly on telemark. Thankfully it was only a couple of hundred meters. The trip out was quick and painless. Can't wait to do that again.