[steeleman]

I'm too lazy to write a full TR, but here's a mini of day 1 of the trip Joe and I took a couple of weeks ago. Day 2 will come sometime soon...

Car shuttle. Done.



Up Ralstonia



Unwittingly climbing Ralston's ridge, about to get devoured by the white monster lurking behind me.



Topping out on Ralston. The only view we'd have for two days...



Baldy, Talking and Mr. Becker (not Fagen)



Echo lakes in there somewhere. I think we should start a thread on whether it is safe to ski over 19 feet of snow on a lake surface.



Joe ponders the uber steep entrance exam to Ralston's NF



Then he unkindly removes all the snow for himself, testing the edge hold on granite, leaving none for the sole follower.



And then starts turning 'em in the zone below...



AT Anonymous and the Gorilla steeze



When I see this picture, I just think Joe's iPod is crankin' "Jungle BOOGIE"



Tallac in background.



Serious porn snow!



AT Anon admiring 2K's worth of fun



Skiing across Ralston Lake and praying we don't fall through the 47 layers of snow and ice into the chilly waters....



Hey, what's that cool set of peaks over there?



Discovering the lair of the elusive tri-ungulate telemarkis sapiens erectus along Lake Aloha.



Clouds descended as soon as we appropriated the snowcave, so we settled for chowder turns off the SW shoulder of Jacks.



Retreat! Retreat! (followed by a most uncool tent barf by yours truly)



Day 2 was better. I promise. We only got lost once.

[Eric O]

That's some very interesting beta-lightage you've got there!

Thanks for great shots. I had no idea how much snow there was in the Echo drainage, though I should've guessed.

[steeleman]

Day 2 (long overdue -- and as if anyone but me and joe really care anyways):

Woke to a whiteout cloud scene over the Aloha area, so our plan to hit Price and Agassiz in the morning was dashed. Instead we skinned up Jacks' south face. My skins pretty much started glopping up immediately, so I let Joe break trail all day through the 2-4 inches of wet new.



A moment of sheer pissed-off-ness as we looked over at the clouds lifting over the Crystal. "Its a sucker hole dude, no worries."



Well, as it turns out, it really *was* a sucker hole and we were glad we didn't tempt fate. Not sure it would've been fun skiing whiteout conditions in a cloud with no trees or other texture around for miles.

Joe got up to the ridge on Jacks and the clouds were looking lower and lower.



It was a trippy scene worthy of some LSD photoshopping.



But we made the summit for a skin strip ("Whooohee, will ya look at the slick bases on these boards!")



Meanwhile, I prayed to the gods of skin wax.



The descent was actually pretty sweet. Trust me.





We got to the bottom beneath our friends Dick and Jack, and the snow quickly yielded to insane sun and heat in about 30 seconds. Look closely in second shot to see our gorilla chowder tracks.





A peanut butter on bagel was consumed ('natch!), and within minutes, the graupel commenced. We had a few inches on us right quick. And yes, that is a Tyvek sheet (thanks Whiteout)



So this is where it gets, well, "cruxy". We start skinning up the south face of Dicks when suddenly visibility goes from pretty stinkin' bad to absolute zero. I've been admiring Joe's ass for about 5 miles and a few thousand vertical feet at this point, and now I have no scenery. And of course we realize that our angle of ascent is taking us on a 35-ish icy/crusty traverse right over the top of a cliff band (that we can no longer really see anyways). After we consult several photos of Dicks taken earlier on our digital cameras to make sure we weren't heading to certain death, Joe leads with aplomb up to the ridge. No problem. (secretly, i actually enjoyed the slow pace. heh heh...)

Me on the ridge. Thanks Joe for not killing us bro!



Late year, big season coverage on Dicks. Joe skinning where possibly no man has ever skinned before.



The north face was our original goal. That was a no go. Standing on top with no visibility, it looked like it would require a BASE jump into some of that witches brew stuff you make on halloween with dry ice. So we started down upper part of the south face and had what were the best turns of the trip so far.







We cut over hard left after some great (and actual) powder turns, aiming for the big chute that leads up from "upper" Dicks Pass to the ridge. Here's what it looks like in a normal snow year in nice weather:



And here's what it looks like when Joe skis down it in zero visibility, with shin-deep 99% water content "powder", no light for photography, and some cheezy photoshopping to resuscitate the image because otherwise it is just a grey blob:



After the subpar chute skiing, we got back onto the great stuff again. The run from upper Dicks down to the lake was just plain awesome porn snow skiing. We had to institute the "no woohooing" rule to make sure we weren't disturbing the wildlife. No pics taken here, as too much fun was being had to pull out the camera. Visibility was crap anyway.

A quick skin across Dicks Lake and we're almost home (wishful thinking). I'm guessing it gets windy around here, or the mother of those trees did crack during pregnancy.



Joe farms a few turns off Peak 9,190'



A long skin up Maggies from there and by the top, I had what Joe calls "the Stare" (shorthand for, "the bear creek spire stare", which itself is shorthand for the, "holy chit mang, I just talus hopped for 10 miles and now I need to drive 9 hours back home, arriving at 3am, only to take a 6am concall with the European lawyers"). Well, here's "the stare" on Maggies:



Joe looking slightly better up top (note the sweet Nicely's hat. He wisely didn't even eat there, just popped in and asked to buy the hat).



So from the top of Maggies, it was all downhill to the road, and then a quick hike down the closed road to the car. The end.

Weeeeeeellllll, not quite. That's what we thought would happen, but mr. uber-navigator "I've skied here a million times" guy (that would be me) ended up getting confused by the tiredness and the cloudcover and was sucked in by a sweet looking chute and thusly skied off into the eagle lake drainage. At the bottom, Joe looked up at the wrong face of north maggies ("Hey, what's that impressive rock face?") and so did I ("whoa, I'm not sure. Did a huge mountain just grow over there where Lake Tahoe should be?"), and then quickly realizing our (my!) mistake, skinned back up. I felt pretty bad about it, so I did the quick transition and broke trail through the steep and deep and wet.

From there, we had a few good turns, a loooong traverse, some survival turns, and then the walk and the car. All was good.





Thanks buddy

[Guerilla_Gorilla]

So when's the little one due?


YES!! YES!! It's a Guerilla Gorilla turn! You can barely see the dude! Bravo, gentlemen.
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Grinding away, refining the Gorilla Turn.

[scott s]

Nice traverse... Don't know how I missed it the first time around. Good thing it was long overdue or I would have missed it entirely.

[bcrider]

[deub]

Love that picture of you and the hugh Ralston Cornice, nice TR!

[adrenalated]

[Danno]

sweet TR
_________________
"anecdotes are fine assbaggery is not"
"I don't really think she's trolling, more like tra-la-la-la-ling."
"I'm comfortable misreading the tone of posts in a way which suits me."
"Alas, I've been born a Sisyphus for love."

[Berko]

What BCRider said.

Looks like you had all the fun catagories well covered.
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Something's got a hold on me, and I don't know what .

[drop'n'in]

[Gumpie]

[Tri-Ungulate]

[telemikey]

Thumbs up... ski stoke still going strong.
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Still no mountains here... nope! Flat as a pancake

[Hose-man]