Day 32: Wow. Just wow.
Mike Bernstein arrived from L.A. at mid-day on Sunday, so I took Monday off from work to spend showing him around. It didn't hurt that I also expected some gates to finally open on Monday after 42-43" of storm total.
I was fortunately correct. They opened not only Catherine's, but also Supreme Bowl, which I didn't expect. I had some faint hope for Backside, too, but that didn't come to fruition.
After tooling around with Mike, rdwore, jojo_obrien, AmyZ and TheOtherAmy on Wildcat and Collins we headed to Supreme to await the Catherine's rope drop. When I saw two patrollers head out with bomb sticks for another pass, however, I calculated that we had at least 30-45 minutes to go, so Mike and I headed to Alf's for an early lunch so as not to waste time eating after the gate opened. Our timing was perfect, for both Catherine's and Supreme Bowl opened just as we emerged from lunch. The same could not be said for Tony Crocker and Liz, who entered Alf's just as we were leaving.
We were rewarded with what were clearly the best runs of the season thus far. We had three untracked laps through Supreme Bowl with face shots galore before it was played out -- one down Supreme Challenge and two down through Lew's Pocket and Brandy Bowl, the second of which was via a line from the top through Home Plate that was pioneering for me. In the 9 years that I've been here I've never before tried to get through the Home Plate area, and while it was somewhat sketchy (enough to wig Mike out a bit) we nevertheless found a relatively clean line through those cliff bands to hit Lew's Pocket and Brandy Bowl from above, rather than breaking trail from the lower Supreme Bowl gate off of Challenger. I think that Mike was pleased:
We reconvened with the others and shifted our attention to Catherine's Area, where we scored another two completely untracked lines through heli-quality bottomless.
We had started the day at the opening bell and concluded with not one, but two non-stop, top-to-bottom High Boy LRPs (Last Run Protocol) when we were finally joined by Tony, arriving back at Goldminer's long after the Collins lift had stopped spinning. High Boy was perfectly smooth, completely loose, dry snow -- in essence, as good as High Boy ever gets. We were also rewarded with a stunning light show as the setting sun finally dipped below the overcast to illuminate the town of Alta below.
Mike Bernstein arrived from L.A. at mid-day on Sunday, so I took Monday off from work to spend showing him around. It didn't hurt that I also expected some gates to finally open on Monday after 42-43" of storm total.
I was fortunately correct. They opened not only Catherine's, but also Supreme Bowl, which I didn't expect. I had some faint hope for Backside, too, but that didn't come to fruition.
After tooling around with Mike, rdwore, jojo_obrien, AmyZ and TheOtherAmy on Wildcat and Collins we headed to Supreme to await the Catherine's rope drop. When I saw two patrollers head out with bomb sticks for another pass, however, I calculated that we had at least 30-45 minutes to go, so Mike and I headed to Alf's for an early lunch so as not to waste time eating after the gate opened. Our timing was perfect, for both Catherine's and Supreme Bowl opened just as we emerged from lunch. The same could not be said for Tony Crocker and Liz, who entered Alf's just as we were leaving.
We were rewarded with what were clearly the best runs of the season thus far. We had three untracked laps through Supreme Bowl with face shots galore before it was played out -- one down Supreme Challenge and two down through Lew's Pocket and Brandy Bowl, the second of which was via a line from the top through Home Plate that was pioneering for me. In the 9 years that I've been here I've never before tried to get through the Home Plate area, and while it was somewhat sketchy (enough to wig Mike out a bit) we nevertheless found a relatively clean line through those cliff bands to hit Lew's Pocket and Brandy Bowl from above, rather than breaking trail from the lower Supreme Bowl gate off of Challenger. I think that Mike was pleased:
We reconvened with the others and shifted our attention to Catherine's Area, where we scored another two completely untracked lines through heli-quality bottomless.
We had started the day at the opening bell and concluded with not one, but two non-stop, top-to-bottom High Boy LRPs (Last Run Protocol) when we were finally joined by Tony, arriving back at Goldminer's long after the Collins lift had stopped spinning. High Boy was perfectly smooth, completely loose, dry snow -- in essence, as good as High Boy ever gets. We were also rewarded with a stunning light show as the setting sun finally dipped below the overcast to illuminate the town of Alta below.
