Ahh winter is finally here, kind of. I’m new to the whole ski touring thing, but it is definltey right up my alley. It combines hours of slogging up a mountain which is then rewarded with a ripping descent. Add in the technical skills, endurance, route finding and navigation, as well as the occasional oh shit moment and I’m pretty much hooked.
I skied from ages three to about 13, so I have memories of shredding the gnar and my muscles generally know what to do. That however, combined with a general high level of confidence (whether validated or not) can sometimes get me in trouble. I also know that backcountry skiing is no joke, calculated risks are the name of the game.
Last weekend me and a buddy were able to time skiing the Inter Glacier on Mount Rainer perfectly. We were able to squeeze in a nice tour high up on the glacier, with the gate basically closing behind us on our way out. Now you’re looking at an additional 10 mile approach, one way.
However nice it was to be out on the first tour of the year, the visibility straight up sucked. Heavy winds, sideways snow and extremely flat light meant we were skiing by brail. We literally leap frogged each other down the face of the Inter, giving each other some type of speck to judge the terrain off of. I’ve never experienced vertigo before, but there were a handful of times when I thought I was stopped only to find that I was still moving, weird stuff.
After about 500 feet of less than graceful turns we were finally rewarded with some OK visibility, this allowed for a handful of nice turns. Those few glorious turns led to hooping and hollering; making the long approach, miserable visibility and numbing cold worth the while.
onemansworld 