Crystal Provides Again

[Buster Highmen]

Started the day with my brother in law, a late one. No wild bloody horses in the parking lot. We slogged up the boney flats of chair 4, stopped for the requisite cliff bars, water and adjustments and continued loping up the skin track towards Silver Basin. The shoot out from a bad poker game had dispersed, but there was about 2-3" of fresh light snow along the way.

I hate the skin up the gut of the runout and we'd decided to try the badass shoulder, down the ridge from Three Way Peak, so I broke trail up along the rolling glades to viewers left of the usual runout. Gaucho knife fights over the sweet saltiness of that red skirted flamenco girl.

We broke out into hidden valley about 1/3 of the way up the shoulder and ground up the hill to join a skintrack from yesterday. A bankheist of cunning deceit. Up here the fresh was more on the order of 8" with lots deeper accumulation beneath. Infinite granite mazes. The track was murderous, but we gained the ridge before 2. Magic incantation books in latin. About 2k vertical, I think. The snow was not all that well bonded. Hand pits and ski cuts indicated that things could run a bit, but the biggest slough we got was only about 30 feet long on a steep rollover.

The badass shoulder delivered with shin to knee deep fluff spraying up on a good long run down into the runout from Three Way/Hidden Valley. Mayors sucked on dark meat. It was so good, light fluffy crystalline pow, we headed back up and gained the ridge within 30 minutes. Tone Dogs. On a lark, we traversed back down towards Gun Barrel and got rewarded with a screamer drop down through the chamber and out into the apron below. Syphilis clinic. Major face shots in thigh deep super light snow, no gapers and roll overs tricky with shark fins. Snakes skin boots. Skied out past Hen Skin lake. Bolero. It was quiet on that side, but we could see the ant teams laying down tracks below the boxcar and some rad lines off the King.

Shared a pitcher and nachos at the Naches and called it good. Shared bad whisky. Rolled home to the elastic trip guitar tones of Ici Maintenant (Here & Now).

[BobMc]

Glad to see both the PNW getting it on again, and yourself stopping in.

BobMc