April Showers bring? Too many photos... :)

[NoKnees]

Snow in the hills..... Kinda like PT's "Last hurrah!", I finally got out to enjoy what could be the last real powder day of the season. Sadly, it's just been the last month that we finally have had the combo of good base and fresh cold snow... The problem with this time of the year is that if you don't get it quick, it's turns to mush. It was blower Friday through Saturday morning, but by noon, anything down low turned to mush. Up higher though, we knew it would still be good...

So, after enjoying some lift served snow Saturday, we went for a good little tour Sunday. Boy am I out of shape... This was my first tour of the season due to lack of coverage and being lazy... Dragged my friend out for his first time ever on a split board or any "ski like" device... To make it even more enjoyable, he had no baskets on his poles. It was a learning experience for him, to say the least...

Disclaimer on the following photos: I haven't actually processed them yet... ;) I just did a quick batch dump to jpg from the raw to share with the guys I rode with and thought I'd toss a couple up here before I forget. My work monitor seems to blow out all the highlights, so let me know what you see. I expect to need to do a bit of curves to reclaim some highlights...

Enough words... First, the way up.... Second post for photos of "Down and out... "

[NoKnees]

Okay, just a couple more, for the action shots and entertaining "split ski" back to the road... Powder up high, sticky flat mush down low... Always a good time... Total tour, 2500ft vertical, 5 or 6 miles... Nothing big, just a nice stroll out in the hills...

[mattb]

Nice line! And no baskets?!?! Oh man that must have been "fun". I carry an extra basket in my BC pack because I have lost one before and it definitely makes things a bit tougher! But I guess if your friend has never skied he may not know what he's missing.
Looks like you guys got it while the getting was good. I missed this last storm due to other commitments and I need to train on my bike for a race that will kill me if I don't!
I'd normally be looking forward to a long spring of corn skiing but it's going fast this year.

[NoKnees]

He still had a good time.... It turned into "Type 2 fun" on the way out. Not always fun during, but all good in retrospect... We ended up having him put skins back on to help check his speed on the way out...

And wow, my photos are mushy beyond belief on here. Need to stick to throwing them elsewhere and doing embedded links to share.. Doing the attach/upload from the post seems to have crush the jpg quality...

A little better quality here: http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/20150...board?h=d8b357

Anyway, it was a good time... I'll take some time cropping and cleaning these this weekend and see if I have one or two good ones to repost...

[mattb]

Yes, type 2 is always more fun when it's over!
Can't you just embed from dropbox? Like this?


That's a cool shot. I like the sticker but I hope you guys were being safe!

[NoKnees]

It didn't like the embed link for me. (Edited: the work after I refreshed the page, maybe cacheing issue, dunno) I could copy and paste it to the browser, but wouldn't show up embedded in the post. Anyway, I usually throw them on my photo-bucket account after I process them and direct link from there. Was just lazy at work and threw them in my dropbox folder.

As for safety, actually yes, we were well behaved. It was a group of four, with one of the guys clearly in the lead role. The lead and I have both done avi 1 courses, although the guy leading (with the sticker) has done a lot of additional education including wilderness 1st aid cert, and similar stuff. Maybe even Avy 2 now, I don't remember...

The point of this tour was more of a clinic for the other guys. They have basic avy knowledge, most importantly the gear and how to use it, just not as much "field work". We took a longer approach to allow us to evaluate the changing conditions and talk more about route selection, safe travel protocol, identification and avoidance of terrain traps and the likes.

But glad you bring it up... Too many folks are just jumping out there now that the equipment is more readily available and it's getting more exposure...

As for favorites, so far I think I like the cropped version of 3898:

and the cold smoke in:


Good times...

[mattb]

Hmmm. They must shut down hotlinking.