2018 in review... part 1, skiing the Mt. Humphreys north couloir

Somewhere near Mt. Baker, 1/1/2018.

The year of 2018 has gone by in a flash, filled with new friends and new experiences, along with plenty of great times in familiar places with favorite people. It began with a lovely bluebird day ski tour near Mt. Baker in Washington, and ended rather inauspiciously in Tahoe, Kit with two broken arms from a motorcycle incident and me working too many hours over the holidays. In between was jammed with so much goodness, from long ski tours and summiting new peaks, stretching the limits of my comfort zone in a few bike races, and an interesting new career direction, to feeling much more confident on a mountain bike than I've been in recent years after wrecking in 2013.

I had to include more skiing photos: gratuitous powder turns in early spring 2018.

I'm also averaging 2-3 blog posts a year--not exactly breaking records here. Oh well. It has been a ridiculously busy year! Since I've failed at describing all of the fun things I/we got into directly after they happened (besides the Downieville Classic), I'm going to start a recap here... most of these things are worthy of their own story, so maybe I will just catch up in a series while waiting for Kit to heal up so we can go on some more adventures!

Before I started work for the summer, Kit and I took a week vacation to camp in the Bishop area and ski some classic lines in the eastern Sierra. The northeast couloir of Mt. Humphreys was another one that stood out in the peaks to the west of Bishop, and was at a high enough elevation that it still held plenty of snow. Although we had heard reports of an ice layer on everything, we decided to go for it anyway since everything in the sun would be nice corn snow, and if we hit ice in the couloir we'd be turning around.

Mt. Locke in the early morning

The hiking part of the approach wasn't too terrible and we were able to start skinning in under an hour. Most of the ascent time was spent getting across and up the valley to the couloir; it was definitely farther away than it looked. The bottom of the couloir had a small avalanche crown and some debris from a slide that looked to have happened in the last storm about a week prior, but everything was well settled by the time we were on it.

Getting closer to the couloir

At this point we put skis back on our packs and pulled out crampons and ice axes to ascend the couloir; there was a hard icy layer but it was under 6-8" of nicely bonded snow which made for good climbing conditions--aside from clumping up on the crampons every few steps. The rock walls echoed with the sounds of my ice axe banging on a crampon every few steps to knock the snowballs off... for some reason Kit didn't seem to have the same issue.

Climbing conditions were a mix of "hot pow" in the sun and cold chalky powder in the shade.

There's nothing like eating snacks with a view!

Nice enough that I hadn't considered how *ahem* exciting it would be to drop into this 50-degree couloir on skis after a couple of seasons devoid of riding lifts and skiing mostly mellow things in the backcountry. Although the ice layer was buried, the top few inches of snow had a weird, sugary quality that made for a very disconcerting feeling of continuing to slide down after every turn, unable to create a stable platform to start the next turn from.

Captain Kit-astrophe sending it on his vintage K2 Ascents

After Kit disappeared down the couloir on his skinny telemark skis, I gaped my way down slipping and sliding on AT gear, making a resolution to ski some steeper things and scare myself a little bit the next winter.

Definitely wondering how I will avoid tumbling down the entire length of this lovely couloir...

We both made it down successfully without any cartwheels or faceplants, and enjoyed another thousand feet or so of nice  but borderline gloppy corn turns before having to pick our way carefully through rocks and finally shoulder the skis on packs again for the final hike down to the truck.

Some nice corn skiing to relax on the way down the mountain.

Almost time to de-ski

Mt. Humphreys from the Buttermilks.

Two days later we headed up the next drainage to the south for an attempt on the Kindergarten Chute, and to peer up the Checkered Demon. Although we passed right below Mt. Locke and the Wahoo Gullies, also excellent skiing, we decided to push farther up for some recon and perhaps if conditions were right we would be able to ski another fun couloir.

Kindergarten Chute to the left, Checkered Demon to the right.

Alas, the Kindergarten Chute turned to ice just over halfway up, and neither of us wanted anything to do with that. It was a lovely day for a nice ski-hike in the mountains anyway, and we got some not altogether terrible turns on the way down, once the precarious act of switching to ski down on an icy slope covered in several inches of snow was completed.

Kit making turns down the Kindergarten Chute.

Classic California spring ski touring look: shorts and T-shirt.

Bonus turns down toward the Owens Valley.

Even though we didn't reach the top of the Kindergarten Chute, we got much more familiar with the terrain and navigating the approach. This area would be another nice one to access via dirt bikes, but definitely a longer and more exhausting ride. We had ridden this approach the previous year while scouting before skiing Basin Mountain, and it was a good amount of riding! Perhaps in the coming spring we will saddle up again for a Mt. Locke or Emerson attempt.