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| Good skiing. |
On Super Bowl Sunday at the end of a mid-February dry spell. Ned and I rallied proper early for a long day in Bass creek. The idea was to extend the classic bowl bounce all the way back to the trailhead. We had a pretty good idea of the route, but had never pieced it together, and it was fun to cast off in the dark without assurance of success. We summited North Bass peak in the customary five hours, not bad given the early start. There was an extremely slippery, thin ice crust up high which kept us on our toes both up and down. Fortunately, the crust was manageable, and the East face skied just fine. We rallied up the WNW face of Smokey Joe, then made our way across new-to-us terrain to the summit. The Southeast face of Smokey Joe skied really nicely.
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| Approaching. |
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Walking out to Smokey Joe. Taking stock of the backdrop.
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I had been low on calories all morning, and took a good break to catch up before boosting up to Lappi point. As we turned the corner to solar aspects on the climb, the nasty ice crust melted, and conditions were much improved. We skied the normal upper Lappi run to the lake. Another long climb, punctuated with spotty at best routefinding on my part (think hanging on to scrub brush downclimbing thin rotten snow over rock slabs - sorry Ned!) had us on top of the high point just West of the Bass creek crags at a comfortable 2 pm. We skied the most prominent Southeast facing gully which ended up being a long, classy ski run with surprisingly good snow. So fun.
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On to Lappi point with our Smokey Joe run behind.
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Skiing down to Lappi Lake.
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| Cruising down the upper bits of the Southeast gully behind Bass creek crags. |
We were in new terrain now, ahead of schedule, and psyched. I led the climb to the easy summit of Crown point. I definitely ran way out of gas, but had plenty of energy to grind it out. The ski down the easy East face of Crown point was objectively terrible - the snow was half refrozen, and my legs were surprisingly absolutely shot. Ned picked the route and led the way flawlessly, and I hacked my way down behind, spirits soaring from a fine day in the Bitterroot.
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Ned about to work some routefinding magic on the return ski to the trailhead.
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Stats and thoughts: 11,700 vertical feet, about 12 hours. I'm pretty excited to thread this line together. It is a logical route with great skiing. It also really suits my preferences of moderate skiing and interesting routefinding. Really great day with Ned - definitely fed off of his motivation and experience in the range. Pulling it off in a day is a challenge between the pure length, some trickery to connect ascent gullies in the second half, and having to catch the South faces of Crown point in a safe condition late in the day. But still worth consideration for a solid touring party, especially since bailing back to the trailhead is possible for most of the route. Since most of the route is high and in relatively safe and simple terrain, it should be in condition most normal years.
I think there must be a better line between Lappi Lake and the top of the West Crown run. It would be worth ironing that out, because Lappi to Crown would actually be a cool tour sitting unexplored under our collective noses.
This tour was a good big one, but one could go even bigger in Bass...
