Walling up to the Buckboard – 06/12/05

6:00 am wake-up with the weathermen calling for clear skies, warm temps, and NO WIND, I figured an early start was a must. Well, it turned out that I probably could have gave it at least another hour, but the "freeze cycle" is on.

Music: LTJ Bukem – ‘Atlantis’

There is snow top to bottom, so you can start skinning right away. There are a couple of patches of dirt around the bottom of Chair 5, and others here and there but its basically all white.

Basically, I was planning to hit the Cirque for a run and then skin over to the top of Oops off of Chair 6 but I ran into one problem.

Since I have dental floss for skins on my Gotamas, the early morning bulletproof proved to be a little difficult for the ascent up the steeper sections of Buckboard. So about a 3rd of the way up, my left ski slips into my left pole….and *snap*, my pole is about 1/4th shorter. After a tender moment of "you have got to be kidding me"…I decided to make the most out of this (most likely one run deal) and get the most sustained vertical as possible. The pole was just long enough to allow me to push up the steeper sections….thank god for that.

Kirkwood – June 12th, 2005 at 7:00am, still some lingering patches around.

About the level of the top of Chair 11, decided to give up skinning and just boot it…..why did I leave my crampons in the car…why?

Shooting gallery shot….of the "corn cycle" doing its magic.

After searching the liftshack and around the ski patrol hut to "borrow" a pole, with no avail I might add, I then hiked up to looker’s left of the top of the chair to get some extra vert and to ski down along the ridge.

Ok, so the bowl looked money. The sun was on it and it really didn’t feel like the middle of June at all.

I skied my usual line off the skier’s left off the top of the Wall ridge and then rallied down to Waterfall chute. The snow from last week, made the surface smooth for the first 9 turns or so all the way to the top of Waterfall. Stoked for sure.

First 3 turns….or maybe 7 but who’s counting?

Next 3 turns…..smooth as Michael Jackson’s pickup lines…wait he was found not guilty…my bad.

Top of Waterfall…

View from Below…

So I then cut hard skier’s right back to Buckboard to ski the skier’s left side (in the sun) and super-g mogul skied the mini-suncups all the way back to the car…(parked at Cornice)

In a perfect world they’d run the Wall chair until July 4th….but since it only takes an hour or so to reach the top, its only about 48 minutes longer to walk up instead.