Ice in the Desert

Well, yesterday we woke up at 5am, stumbled around in the dark, threw our ski clothes on piled into our cars and headed up to the Geiser Basin trail head in the La Sals.

The objective, of making it to the top of our lines before noon.

The approach was long and the final boot pack up the couloir (later named Helen Keller) was steep, icey and really mad me wish I had an ice axe.

But none the less, myself, Alex Paul, And Weston D. made it up to the top of our lines by 11am.

Weston skied Helen Keller, the tightest shoot of the three, at parts his skies barely fit through the narrow walls of the Couloir.

After hearing the icy turns echo through the basin there was talk of abandoning my line, but I decided to go for it. It was just lookers right of Helen Keller, a steep couloir that had a narrow choke about ski length wide. I dropped in and it was an ice sheet with lose rocks peppered on top.

It was bullet proof, scratchy, slow survival skiing, but at the end I was stoked to have skied it anyway.

Alex took the good advice and hit a line that was getting a little more sun and his first few turns were delicious, however as he dropped down his line too became scratchy. All and all we decided that it was cool that we skied our lines, but the quality of snow and the energy and time it took to get into that zone was not worth repeating at this time.

So we say bye bye to the La Sals. We will see you next winter!!!