All week it was predicted to rain late yesterday, then snow all day today, the last scheduled ski day of the Adventure Project tour. With that prediction we took yesterday off and arranged to ski Thursday before driving back to Tashkent.
Storm day skiing is normally done below tree line at Chimgan, but coverage is so marginal that both Ilya and I were skeptical of skiing there after what we saw Tuesday before our beacon practice.
But we finally caught a break with the weather. The storm sped up and snowed heavily overnight with afternoon clearing predicted, so we took our chances with Amirsoy. Ilya grew up as a snowboarder, has been skiing for 4 years but still prefers his board on fresh powder days. FYI Ilya said it has been over a month since Amirsoy had as much as a foot of snow in a storm and this was only the second 6-incher since then.
The morning was mostly high overcast, but with scattered trees inbounds we only had one run with bad light. The pics aren’t great but at least you can see we got a nice powder day.
We followed Ilya and most runs had diagonal fall lines near the upper gondola. 7 of the 9 runs were to mid-station, which is 1,470 vertical by my watch. I took most pics on early runs, these 4 from the first run.
The second run started directly under the gondola.
Ilya crossed a gully and traversed up to a nice wall but got bogged down on his board. He instructed us to hit it as there was another group approaching. So I got in there first, my track at right while Matt next skied to the left.
Liz followed.
We got two more runs in to mid-station before venturing out upper Charlie. The fog rolled in and made the open bowl more challenging. I used Ilya’s track for reference but still missed a roller and fell near the bottom of the bowl. Matt went skier’s right for better reference points but more variable snow.
We then had an exit gully and traverse that ended about halfway down Charlie.
Liz took a break to clean her foggy goggles. Ilya, Matt and I took 3 more mid-station runs with Ilya doing a nice job of finding the least tracked lines. For my last run I wanted to check out the ridge between the gondola and Charlie. Here I’m looking down it with the only track in front of me being Ilya’s.
There were a few other tracks in there. Looking back up from the middle of the ridge:
Ilya surveying the lower part where trees get denser:
Once we got a few fresh tracks but had to cut back through a tight spot to stay on the ridge. I could step up but Ilya had to take off his board and posthole about 15 steps. At the bottom it was probably best that we were not first so we could follow the cleanest route out, ending not far from the bottom of Charlie.
Meanwhile Matt ventured slightly into the east sidecountry where it is likely we will go tomorrow.
I finished with 15,300 vertical and about 10K of powder.
Storm day skiing is normally done below tree line at Chimgan, but coverage is so marginal that both Ilya and I were skeptical of skiing there after what we saw Tuesday before our beacon practice.
But we finally caught a break with the weather. The storm sped up and snowed heavily overnight with afternoon clearing predicted, so we took our chances with Amirsoy. Ilya grew up as a snowboarder, has been skiing for 4 years but still prefers his board on fresh powder days. FYI Ilya said it has been over a month since Amirsoy had as much as a foot of snow in a storm and this was only the second 6-incher since then.
The morning was mostly high overcast, but with scattered trees inbounds we only had one run with bad light. The pics aren’t great but at least you can see we got a nice powder day.
We followed Ilya and most runs had diagonal fall lines near the upper gondola. 7 of the 9 runs were to mid-station, which is 1,470 vertical by my watch. I took most pics on early runs, these 4 from the first run.
The second run started directly under the gondola.
Ilya crossed a gully and traversed up to a nice wall but got bogged down on his board. He instructed us to hit it as there was another group approaching. So I got in there first, my track at right while Matt next skied to the left.
Liz followed.
We got two more runs in to mid-station before venturing out upper Charlie. The fog rolled in and made the open bowl more challenging. I used Ilya’s track for reference but still missed a roller and fell near the bottom of the bowl. Matt went skier’s right for better reference points but more variable snow.
We then had an exit gully and traverse that ended about halfway down Charlie.
Liz took a break to clean her foggy goggles. Ilya, Matt and I took 3 more mid-station runs with Ilya doing a nice job of finding the least tracked lines. For my last run I wanted to check out the ridge between the gondola and Charlie. Here I’m looking down it with the only track in front of me being Ilya’s.
There were a few other tracks in there. Looking back up from the middle of the ridge:
Ilya surveying the lower part where trees get denser:
Once we got a few fresh tracks but had to cut back through a tight spot to stay on the ridge. I could step up but Ilya had to take off his board and posthole about 15 steps. At the bottom it was probably best that we were not first so we could follow the cleanest route out, ending not far from the bottom of Charlie.
Meanwhile Matt ventured slightly into the east sidecountry where it is likely we will go tomorrow.
I finished with 15,300 vertical and about 10K of powder.
