Sunshine and blue skies

The arctic cold temperatures are finally retreating from Colorado (for now) and Christine and I went out to Montgomery Pass to enjoy the sunshine.

The weather was dreamy compared to last time we were up there when it was snowing and blowing like mad. Instead, we had a really calm day with plenty of sunshine. Not a lot of new snow, but that's a tradeoff we were happy to take.

Recent avalanche activity

We didn't leave the house until after 8 (hey, I had to watch the Belgian CX championship), and by the looks of Zimmerman parking lot, we weren't going to be the only ones catching some backcountry rays. The latest avalanche report said there was a large slide on South Diamond Peak and we could see if from the parking lot. We had it in our head to be our normal cautious selves. (If you click through the photo, you can see the slide area on the larger version.)

I think Kuzca enjoys skiing even more than backpacking. For starters, she doesn't have to wear the backpack. But aside from that, I think she loves running around in the snow and she loves that we're as fast or faster than her when we're going downhill. On normal walks or hikes we don't get to chase each other, but the snow levels the playing field. She was completely exhausted by the end of the day.

Christine and Kuzca

We made nice steady progress up to the bowls and stopped at the bottom to enjoy some lunch. I don't think I've ever heard of an avalanche in that bowl, but I'm not willing to trust that statistic (or my own memory) so I dug a quick snow pit while I waited for Christine to make her way up the skin track. The snow didn't seem likely to slide, but if it did go, it would go big. We hung in the trees and had a pretty good time doing a couple runs. Other people were feeling more confident about the snow and the bowl was amazingly skied out. I don't know if I've ever seen so many tracks there. We even saw a group of three skinning straight up the bowl. I guess they counted on some other group to dig them out if all 3 of them got buried?



There was a group of several snowboarders up there too. That kind of blew because they were on snow shoes (or just boarding boots in some cases) and tearing up the skin track. So annoying. On our second lap, we ended up just making a new track through the trees. It earned me a little more exercise, but mostly it was nice not to be skinning over boot holes. We took a great run through the trees, soaking up the untracked powder.

We finished out the evening with some great dinner with friends. All in all, it was a great day.