Learning to backcountry ski

2023 has been a slow year adventure/climbing wise. There have been a bunch of reasons for it. After returning from Greece, I found that my stoke and psych for climbing had been a bit low. However, with the record breaking snow this year, I finally took the plunge and bought a backcountry ski set-up. I had a ton of fun being a novice again and learning how the whole ski touring thing works

I did a bunch of solo tours on Black Butte, near Huntington lake, which was great for learning. The drive and approach are short, there is very little avy danger, so it was the perfect place to learn!

Top of Black Butte - looking down on Huntington lake

Fresh turns in the silky powder on the north facing slopes of Black Butte

 

I only did a couple of bigger tours, both in Kaiser peak area. The firs bigger one was Ted up to Potter Pass. The uphill was pretty easy, skinning is not very difficult and is certainly an efficient way to travel. The problem came on the downhill. The guys at REI had not quite adjusted the heel gap on my binding properly so one of my skis would not stay on! Yikes! 7 miles and 2,500' of elevation to descend was not easy!

Ted using my skin tracks as we head up Potter Pass

A snowy landscape around Huntington Lake

Just to the west of Potter pass. We skied down the drainage to the left

On a second ski trip I went back to Kaiser Peak with Griffon, this time we took the main Kaiser peak trail, which was much steeper. We found tons of fresh deep powder, and with my binding repaired the ski went much better! I'm looking forward to getting a bit more into ski touring next winter!

Griffon and Shasta

Deep powder

Virgin powder on the slopes. Backcountry skiing is fun!