Sunday, 12 April 2015
who needs pictures anyway
Imagine hiking up a mountain from 200 feet above the channel to 2,500 or 3,000 feet, to the shoulder of the highest mountain on the island across from Juneau. Its cloudy and windy just above treeline, but below you its almost clear and across the water you can see the city below and the wall of mountains behind it. The sky is gray and white with clouds that look like smoke.
The snow on Mount Jumbo is crusty. Theres snowmachine tracks most of the way up, icy and hard and fast for walking. In the woods, the crust is hard enough to keep the skiers on top and to keep me, on snowshoes, mostly on top. Once we bust out of the trees into the big open bowl below the summit, the snow changes again -- windblown and hard in places, soft and deep in others, so that each step for me involves sinking in, pushing off, sinking in again.
I went with friends who know a lot more than I about avalanche danger. We dug a deep pit in the snow a little ways down from the summit, checked the hard and soft layers, studied the snow crystals, measured the temperature change in the snowpack. I jumped on a carved-out block of snow harder and harder until I and my snowboard set off a foot-thick layer. The way I understand it, youre never completely safe in the mountains, but theres ways to reduce your danger by choosing the right path, staying off bad snow, and having the gear you need for a rescue as a last resort.
All went well Saturday -- in fact, glorious. We were out for about six hours and had probably 2 or 3 minutes total of real nice backcountry skiing (thats called earning your turns), plus a mostly scary slide down the narrow snowmachine trail to town. Wish I had some pictures to share . . .
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