TR: CLOSING WATERFALL (last run, semi-technical, pics of Blurred & Telekóptero)
Last run of the season in Waterfall Chute with Blurred Elevens, Telekóptero, his friend, Gary, and I
Sunday, April 11, 2004
9 images ~650K (not up to par due to really bad snow, low light, and a malfunctioning digicam)
We raced towards the entrance… it was nearly time for patrol to put up the ropes. If we got into the bowl before it closed, we had a guaranteed ride up Orient. The patrollers were there, but they hadn’t started to put up the ropes so we were in. Everyone cruised down to the lift.
It was a great day so far. Blurred, Allison, Gary, and I had been skiing around Vail in the new snow and had hiked Mushroom Bowl twice, the second time with Telekóptero and his friend (whose name I can’t remember). I went huge (for me) and was all pumped up. The snow at the top of Mushroom had been outstanding, though not as nice as the day before. We rushed the walkout on the last run to be sure to make the exit chair to avoid the mile long inbounds mud slog. Once we made the chair, we wanted to put a run in on Waterfall, which we though would have good snow up top. Not only was it our 10th and last Vail day, but it was the last day that the lifts needed to get close to the chutes would run.
We cruised down the catwalk towards #22, which was not running. Two folks were going up the boot pack that I’d cut the day before and we’d been using. I stop to say, incase they didn’t already know, that they were hiking up to a large cliff band with no outs and that they would have a five mile flat ski out before having to slog through mud for another mile. The guy bristled and informed us that now was not the time to ski the open bowl of East Vail. He had no idea that we weren’t headed for Marvin’s bowl, which is what 90%+ of the people who ski East Vail hit. As it turned out, they had no idea what was at the top of the boot pack and didn’t take my information seriously. As we skied down the catwalk and booted up the steepish (except dirty Telekóptero who had brought skins, bastard) we watched these two reach the top, stand for a while, then walk on the ridge almost all the way over to the ridge above the top of the poma line before turning around and backtracking out of sight. They probably had to walk back down the boot pack and up the catwalk to ski the front side since they clearly didn’t like the cliffs.
We knew we had about 3.5 hours of daylight left, so we decided to be very lazy in our run on the chute. While we walked slowly up the poma line, there was an incredibly loud FWOOOSH like an eagle had flown right by my head doing 100mph. The entire S facing slope above us had just settled on it’s own (we most likely didn’t set it of since we were on the heavily packed poma line.) It was the loudest settling any of us had ever heard. Of course, the slope above poma wasn’t steep enough to go. We figured it was probably because it was in the open baking in the sun all day, and was now cooling. It was a freaky noise. I could hear it passing through the snow like lightning from behind me to my front.
~1645 We hiked up the steep section, ate some dinner, and marched to the gate before skiing on our long and usual traverse. The terrain looked very odd because the wind had been blowing the opposite of it’s usual direction and there were large drifts along the traverse, skied through the trees and the meadows to the top of the steep open slope where we always dug our pits. ~1745 We dug four pits and were not surprised to find the left edge of the slope had only about 1.5ft of coverage while the right side that was always usually more stable had closer to 4.5ft of snow. We were disappointed to find that everything had a sun crust. We knew the chute would be bad towards the middle and that we would have to walk out through areas we normally skied at the bottom, but we had really hoped the top would not be crusty. The snow pack seemed mostly stable and consolidated from our pits and stability tests. After throwing on another layer and my clear goggles, I cut off into the trees to hit a small drop towards the bottom that turned out to have a fun double lip. Telekóptero followed suit (sorry, the camera malfunctioned). As we continued down, we encountered areas of thick but breakable death crust and some areas of softer snow.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic22724.jpg
Hard Turn
~1815 We played around despite the crust.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic22725.jpg
Tuck Off
My camera stopped malfunctioning in time for Telekóptero’s little drop.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic22726.jpg
Tele Up
Everyone dropped the first waterfall and I hucked from the high point Blurred had flipped from, I stuck it… of course I didn’t flip. A little farther on, Telekóptero hucked backwards on his telemark gear into some nasty crust. It was pretty ballsy. We made our way down and the crust no longer broke beneath us by the time we reached the main waterfall. We sent the two snowboarders to walk down on the side sally. I was hoping to film a new angle of Brett dropping the whole fall. However the waterfall had really wasted away. I climbed down to do a large double drop on the left side of the fall while Blurred and Telekóptero went around to the right. It was pretty technical the way they went with Telekóptero shoving his poles all the way into the snow behind his head for hand holds on a narrow section. Blurred, who had reached the bottom, strongly urged me not to huck from my position. Though I was still pumped from my huge drop earlier in the day, I heeded his advice, though doing so meant a difficult climb out from where I was (man I love Vibram on the bottom of my boots). I had to remove all my gear and rest it in the bush above my head before free climbing up the near vertical wet dirt and loose roots. Once I got up that, I paused to take a picture of Telekóptero and the remains of the waterfall.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic22727.jpg
Barren Falls
Then I threw my skis and poles onto the snow above and shoved my arms in deep to pull myself up before sidestepping over so I could ski to Telekóptero’s position. It wasn’t easy. Telekóptero jumped off the position you see in the picture above and landed just above the small tree but messed up his landing and fell down the embankment, but he was fine. It was my turn, I threw off… *WHGACK* I caught the tree trunk on my left shin above the protection of my boot. “That smarts!” It ended up just ripping off a bunch of skin, but nothing serious. I picked myself up and we regrouped and continued down the now treacherous ice crust that barely covered the chute on each side of what was now an open and running stream. Picking which side of the stream to be on became very important in some cases and it was very hard to get back across if one ended up on the wrong side. We reached another small all that required sticking off on up high on the steep wall, which barely allowed us to hold an edge. The coverage was very bad.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic22728.jpg
Open Water
~1915 At a double falls that normally could be linked, we had to stop and side slide down one by one. Another we had to do this while grabbing onto tree branches for support. It was very tiring and very slow going. Blurred and I were keeping a close watch on the time and we were doing just fine. We reached the quad stair steps of light… but it was in terrible shape.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic22730.jpg
Broken Stair Steps of Light
~1930 The falls had open water pouring down and our usual route down were blue ice and pools of water. We took the alternate route that normally is avoided due to it’s sketchiness. It was a treacherous. To our horror, Telekóptero fell off the side about 6ft down onto ice. We were worried he might have broken something in the fall, but he was A-OK and climbed out.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic22731.jpg
Tele Fell Down the Stairs
We were exactly where we needed to be on time. It was twilight and there was only another 100 yards of skiable terrain. We packed up as it became dark. Gary and I broke out our headlamps and we hiked through a drainage down some low angle small Aspen to the final feature of the chute: a smallish 10fter that normally could be hucked onto hard snow.
~1750 We stood on dirt with our skis and boards on our packs. The first person climbed down, and most of us handed down gear before free climbing down in our boots.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic22732.jpg
Summit Climbs
Though it was unnerving (I don’t climb), it wasn’t too hard.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic22733.jpg
Telekóptero
We then made our way down steep loose mud and jumped a ravine before walking through a field to the bus stop. ~2010 Everyone was muddy and it was very dark. We got some damned weird looks on the bus. It was a great day.
Everyone had kept a great pace and skied well on what turned out to be a very fun run. Though the snow was terrible, the challenge of what was my most technical run of the season made it a load of fun. We knew that we were almost certainly the last people to ski Waterfall Chute that season.
Past East Vail Chutes TR’s:
TR: HUCKING WATERFALL (PICS of Blurred and Evil E + 45ft waterfall stomp & more http://tetongravity.com/forums/showt...threadid=10177
TR: WATERFALL CHUTE (PICS of Summit airborne and Brett inverting off a cliff)
http://tetongravity.com/forums/showt...&threadid=6626
Trip Report – 2 Days of East Vail Chutes BC – Sick!
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/s...&threadid=5188
