Trip Report

Up at 4:55 AM five minutes before the alarm was to go off; killed the alarm. Got dressed, stuffed my food bag with the chilled food items ate my yogurt and a banana ready to go by 5:30. Now wait for Jim to pick me up at 6:00.

The drive up was uneventful stopped in at Cougar (No we weren’t Cougar hunting) to pick up climbing permits and sign in the climbing register. Reached the Marble Mountain parking lot a little before 8:00, we got geared up; witnessed an altercation between some “hippy” skier chick and our 2 cycle sled friends. The snowmobilers were getting there sleds off the trailers when this skier came over and asked them to turn off their machines until the skiers had left. The snowmobiler #1 obviously having been through this before explained that they were trying to get out of there as soon as they could; and her talking to them was delaying them leaving. This wasn’t good enough for her who just stood there and told them how the blue smoke was making her sick. Snowmobiler #2 told her that they were not breaking any rules and that this was there area too while snowmobiler #3 goosed the throttle in the parking lot in disgust creating another plume of blue smoke in her face. She sure told them... 

With that out of the way we applied our skins, put on our packs and headed up the trail. About a mile in I noticed my foot moving around in the binding. I took a few more steps and took off my boards and investigated.  Almost all of the screws holding my binding to the adapter plate were loose and the side with my foot moving around had two missing nuts with the screws not attached to anything. Good times. Luckily one of the nuts was still sitting on my board but the other was long gone.  Using my Leatherman  I managed to tighten them all back down with my right side only using three screws. Did the tech who set up my board forget to tighten them or did they come loose from touring? This prompted me to check them frequently for awhile and they stayed tight for the most part so I think the tech did not tighten them. I should have checked them before heading up like I normally when going to a ski area.

The board used in tour mode performed awesome I could go straight up pretty steep pitches without sliding and needing to traverse way past many skiers traverse line. There were a few tense moments when traversing right above a cliff keeping the boards from sliding as I had only one effective edge as the downhill boards edge was the curvatured side so it just wanted to slide. After getting used to the technique I found that by taking more of an angle, instead of the shallower angle that skiers were taking I could use my uphill edge and skin down hard on my downhill side. Seemed to work… At about 7,000’ with another 1,200’ slog to the rim with thighs burning and snow getting softer by the moment we decided to call it and save our legs for the run down. I took out my snow shovel and made a level platform for setting up my board as the slope was fairly steep and switched over my board from “tour” mode to “ride” mode. This was a relatively easy task even with gloves on and snow caked over everything. I check my binding screws again to be sure they were still tight and took in the killer views while eating some bread and cheese.

Not really having a “line” we wanted to take we kind of went into a couple different areas. One area took us down the side of a ridge and with the soft conditions couldn’t get enough speed to make it back on top of the ridge. Not wanting to follow the gulley all the way down we decided to hike to the top of the ridge. The snow being soft as it was eventually my footing gave away and I slid almost all the way down to the bottom of the ridge. Shortly after Jim lost his traction on his skis and slid way down way past me. After some laughter and discussing our options it was decided he would try to skin to the top again (and retrieve one of his poles) while I rode around the ridge a little further down and either climb to the top of the ridge (less of a climb further down) or ride the run out down to the bottom which could put me off course eventually and would have to posthole or skin back to the trail. I managed to gain a little elevation riding around the ridge which put me within 60 feet or so from the top of the ridge. This was close enough to hop to the top but not easy as the loose snow was a couple feet deep so I had to punch some hand holds in the snow to push off from then try and hop with my board to the hand hold location which by then were compressed enough to hold the board from slipping back down. This worked about 70% of the time.

We both got to the top of the ridge about the same time with Jim reunited with his ski pole. The 

ride back to tree-line from there was pretty straight forward made for some pretty nice turns giving the soft conditions. 

I was dreading the 2+ mile run through the trees figuring the straight run without turning would seriously cramp my legs. I used one of my ski poles to “push off” some and balance me through the slow spots,  but I felt pretty good all the way down actually was pretty fun. Sure beats postholing!

Overall great day with extremely warm sunny weather (for April) 

Check these pic out. Don't have ant of me yet until Jim gets off his ass and send me his pictures.