Blodget ski days

I had a trio of early winter ski ski days in Blodgett.  None of them were perfect, but all of them were decent, and all valuable experience in my quest to unravel the abundant yet fickle ski mysteries of Blodgett.

Mill Point, Shoshone and Kootenai gullies
Another late start.  I decided to climb from Blodgett to maximize time spent in new terrain.  I walked the normal Shoshone climbing approach and booted another few hundred feet above before putting skis on.  Footing was trecherous, and I fell once and knocked the wind out of myself and bruised or broke my ribs.  The fall hurt like a bugger, and it took about three weeks to heal, but I was able to keep skiing.  I skinned up the path between Shoshone and Flathead.  The long dry spell had closed, and there was up to 8" of new fresh snow. Skinning was tricky, and the new snow was predictably unstable on the old ice crust.  At the top, I cached heavy gear and skied the gully back down to the end of good snow at about 6,000 feet. The snowpack was thin, and I had to ski carefully, but it was a great 2,000 foot powder run.  

Looking down the Flathead gully.

I jammed back up my skin track and floundered a bit on dangerous collapsing slabs (not too scary, but I did have to employ meticulous, heads up routefinding) to Mill point.  I also tried to rock climb a rock step near the summit, and failed spectacularly.  Rock climbing is not a good idea with a broken rib, in ski boots.  In any case, I retreated before doing anything dumb and found another way to the summit, arriving just before sunset. I skied the Kootenai gully between the UK buttress and Nez Perce.  It is a great ski line, but it was terribly thin, and I clipped more rocks than I would have liked.  I skied as far as possible before picking my way down about 800 feet of classic Bitterroot slabs, steep grass, and talus to the trail.

The schuss out was filled in and fast.  I probably jumped into these a little early, but overall coverage is great and I need to start doing peak to creeks as conditions allow.  About 6.5 k, done in 7 hours.

Great snow at the top of the Kootenai gully.

Mill Point, Shoshone and Kootenai gullies
In full furlough style, I didn't leave the trailhead until 11 am after day care drop off, but had the rest of the day at my disposal.  I made the normal climb to Mill point in an even 3 hours, including a quick inconclusive pit stop (I dug my pit on a representative aspect, but the snowpack was too shallow to represent the thick wind slab avalanche hazard present on the steepest upper portion of the bowl).  In any case, the avalanche danger was a stout Moderate, but it was coming off a larger storm cycle that produced a lot of dangerous avalanches, especially in adjacent ridges, so it seemed prudent to treat it more like Considerable.

The trailbreaking was rather laborius all the way up, but I ground it out.  I had been skiing perfect powder day after day, and to my surprise, the snow was not very good, even up high.  From the summit, I nosed my way down the most conservative route in the main upper bowl.  The run was excellent, with fun glade skiing in the upper third, a fun gully in the middle third, and fun meadow skipping lower down.

Steep glade skiing on the first run in the Southeast bowl of Mill point.

I skied for a little over 2,000 vertical feet and climbed back to the summit.  I skied another lap in the bowl, climbed for a third summit, then booked it out to the car.  The exit took almost exactly an hour, and it was nice to arrive back at the car right at dark.  It was great to finally ski this excellent run, and I will keep it in mind as a good option when solar aspects are skiing well and the avalanche danger is on the moderate/considerable divide.  I was pretty tired today.  8.5k vert, 7 hours

The fun middle gully at the bottom of the Southeast bowl of Mill point.
The run continues down and around the corner.

Sears Lake couloir and peak to creek

Powder skiing above Sears Lake.

Jeffrey and I rallied at 4 am with high hopes of skiing a big day of peak to creek runs.  Unfortunately it was super warm, and we ended up spending a rather demoralizing few hours rain and mush skinning in the dark.  We left the trail at the High Lake trail junction.  I took the slop trailbreaking pull to freezing line, and Jeffrey took the glop trail breaking pull to the top of the Sears lake couloir.  I was feeling really low energy, and just did my best to keep up.  It had not snowed as much as I had feared overnight, and I felt quite confident dropping into the couloir.  The entrance is super funky, but we had quite amazing skiing once we got in the couloir itself.  It is a great line, and would be a classic were it not lodged so far away from civilization.

Jeffrey working his way through the scrappy entrance to the Sears Lake couloir.

Great skiing in the Sears lake couloir. 

 We still wanted to get to 10k in, but with terrible snow down low, decided to take the easy route and lap powder above Sears lake.  We took three varied and interesting runs above the lake.  For some reason, we were both really fighting fatigue, but we put our heads down and got it done on the climbs.  The skiing was great fun.  To end the day, we climbed to the big avalanche path of the Printz ridge high point.  We made the traverse from the Sears basin to the peak successfully, but were stymied by no visibility at the final upper headwall.  I was tired enough to be quite content with not bumbling around in the soup trying to find a safe way to the top, and Jeffrey kindly agreed to start heading down.  I want to return and ski this big one from the summit.  Even with very sloppy skiing in the lower half, we had a good run.  The trail out was a grind.  I really should have brought kicker skins to speed things up, but we resorted to traditional methods, making the exit in 2.5 hours.  I got lazy and ski skimmed over a lot of rocks on the trail, glad to have brought my durable Bitterroot adventure skis.

First run above Sears lake.

Third run above Sears lake.

Good skiing in the upper part of our peakish to creek run.

Big mountains, little skier.  Skiing to the trail.

This was, for me, the hardest ski day this year, and I was pretty whopped by the time we made it back to the car. We ticked just over 10k vert, done in 13 hours car to car.