I spent a few days skiing various lines off Romney ridge over the course of the winter, and am more and more excited about the venue. By using Canyon creek as a high elevation springboard, one can access a lot of the mid-canyon Blodgett creek terrain without having to climb through the almost universally bad lower reaches in Blodgett. Also, the Canyon and Blodgett roads connect, so it is easy to shuttle between the two drainages. I would like to keep exploring this general area more in the future.
Romney Ridge lemon day 2/1 I ended up drawing the short straw and skied on a truly sub-opitmal weather day. When I left the car around 6:30 am, it was already 53 degrees, and the winds up high were whipping. Little did I know that it would be so windy that Snowbowl would have to close. I didn't like the sheet of ice on the Canyon creek road. So I parked early, donned micro spikes, and trudged to the trailhead, then cruised up the surprisingly well filled in trail, then made my way up to Romney ridge high point 8,685.
A quick and reassuring pit on the steep Northeast face, followed later in the day by a pit in a thin Southeast facing snowpack helped lend further evidence to my contention that the Bitterroot is trending out of the deep slab instability problem. I felt quite comfortable skiing the beautiful larch ramp down toward Blodgett. The snow quality was truly terrible, but voila, West Arch bowl!
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| First ski run, with the Horsehead arch visible far below. |
I had tentative ideas to ski steeper adjacent runs, but couldn't really get excited about rolling the dice with the deep structural instabilites so I climbed up to the West rim of the basin and took two fun runs down back down to the arch, then climbed back to Romney. Physically, it felt nice to just grind away, get to 10, and get tired. The peak to creek run back to the trail was not stellar, but it was still a good run. It would be quite enjoyable with better snow. I benefitted mightily from the good coverage and sticky snow during the egress. In fact, I never got the Canyon creek beat down, and with the screaming fast icy road, the egress took well under 2 hours from the summit to the car.
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| Mill 2 to Blue Ice bowl in Blodgett. And my second run in the background. |
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| Upper Blodgett. |
I literally did not take a good turn all day, but I still returned to the car buzzing with excitement. Skiing in the Bitterroot is in. No really, it is in. Like the good old Bitterroot days. Party on in the Bitterroot. Go get it before it rains again!
Swan slabs: 2/21 I skied the Swan slabs in a moderate length day with Leah. We enjoyed a mellow climb and took a long, warm lunch above the ski run. The entrance is very steep, and I was able to ski cut a 6" soft slab pocket in thin snow in the starting zone. With avalanche danger abated, we skied good settled powder down to the ice. We were able to downclimb steep re-gen trees skier's left of the first ice step, but got pretty stymied on the second ice step and ended up rappelling from an established anchor from the ice climb.
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Lunch break at our high point, with the Blue ice bowl and upper Blodgett visible.
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Leah skiing at the top.
The crown from the small pocked I triggered is visible just below the ridge.
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Fun powder skiing in the Swan slabss.
Our 30m rope was about 10 feet too short, but I was able to belay Leah down and downlimb the last few feet myself. Aside from it taking a long time, we felt safe the whole time, and the skiing out to the trail was surprisingly decent. We were already late for day care pickup, and scuttled out as quickly as possible. I have come to the unfortuntate conclusion that Swans slabs isn't a great ski run after making two descents and encountering a lot of difficulty getting around the ice at the bottom both times.
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Rappelling at the end of the rope. I had already tossed my pack,
and just hopped down the last few feet to safety.
Arch bowl and unnamed slab bowl: 3/14 I returned right on the cusp of the coronavirus outbreak to ski a few new to me runs. After hearing multiple tales of woe of accessing Arch bowl (the bowl just east of Horsehead arch) from the bottom, I was deviously excited to try it from the top. I left the car parked at the Blodgett/Canyon road intersection in a driving snow storm, and it flurried on and off for most of the climb to Ronmey ridge high point. Fortunately, the weather cleared just enough to make for an absolutely gorgeous afternoon.
Climbing out of Canyon creek.
From the ridge top, I skied down to the top of Arch bowl. I skied a nice clean line on the Eastern edge. It was great! From a small bench well above the creek, I wrapped around to West arch bowl.
Looking down to the Arch near the top of the Arch bowl.
A big climb put me on top of point 8352 and my intended ski line in the slabby gully system that drops off the North shoulder to Blodgett. I encountered some thinly covered rock slabs near the top, but was able to work my way off of them into deeper snow. The bowl itself is steep and fun. It all sits on perilous rock slabs, but the snowpack was frozen and locked down, and I felt safe. The skiing was great all the way to the creek. The egress was quite easy, with enough snow to ski all the way to the trailhead and out the road with only a couple of ski-off transitions. I was pretty excited about Arch bowl. It has a pretty thin snowpack, but skiing it from the top is the way to go, and exiting down to Blodgett would be doable with a lot of snow. With the underlying slabs, the unnamed bowl felt too objectively hazardous to be a recommended ski run, but I am glad I got it done with safe conditions.
Climbing above the Arch.
Crazy light in the new peak to creek run.
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