Back to Work for a few days! Work Hard! Play Hard!

One get really energetic and excited after working 18hrs straight!  

Early Season Skiing of One of Butch's Chute

Butch's is accessed from an out of bounds ridge outside of Mount Baldy ski area or from the snow park on the way up to Baldy.  

Greg Eiseman and I skied the chute on the left side of the major rock rib ridge.  There was hardly any snow at the 55 degree entrance so we down climbed precariously 15' down until there was enough snow to put the skis on.  Here the slope angel mellowed out to a good 40 degrees.  We skied a few turns to the bottleneck where we where forced to traverse 10' to the skiers right.  Then is was super boney and steep again where we were excited to maneuver a dicey section with our skis on.  The rest of the ride was a pleasurable 35-40 degrees.  

At the bottom we skied out into the snow park where we waited for our friends driving down from the ski resort.

Here at the snow park I asked three dudes who were enthusiastically shoveling snow onto their car what they were doing.  They proceeded to tell me they performed this strange phenomena so they could drive back to L.A. and show their esses' and chicas and then  share cervazas around their accomplishment of conquering snow and bringing it back to the concrete jungle of L.A. 

Climbing and Skiing Mount Hood's Variation of The Old Chute

Looking south towards Jefferson.

Almost looks like an ice vertebrae 

Got to love rime, made for a difficult skin.

Steep + Icy & Powdery + Poor visibility = FUN!

We stashed the skis at the yoke of the chute.  The chute was filled with huge ice mounds, which would pose to be pointless to ski.  It would have been more of a side stepping process down the whole chute.  We will ski it later in the season once snow fills it in.

Tis the top.  Didn't take any pictures on the ski down.  The visiblity was so poor and the strong wind easily convinced us to keep our gloves on and sites set and getting down since we could see a damn thing.

Skiing Mt Hood's Old Chute on a Blue Bird Day

Post storm...time to start skinning

Taking a bearing in case a front comes in

Climbing together...common bond

Clouds flowing by

What more is there to life

Being together on top above all else

Peering down scoping my line

Laura loving the gravity and the turn

Are we on the beach or what? 

Tahquitz Rock: The Long Climb

Yep.  That's snow hanging off the eve.

Hiking up to Tahquitz looking at Suicide Rock.

Left Cordel's in Loma Linda at 5:30 heading toward Idyllwild in search of Coffee and Tape.  We only found one of the two, fortunately the most important was found--Coffee.