By Tom Herron
Our first weekly Bachelor skin & ski was a great success. Myself, Liz Coleman, Norm Young, Karen Johnson, and Lisa Lau met at the Park & Ride at 8am and carpooled up as planned. We waited outside the lodge until about 9:10 for any additional participants, but seeing none we got started. Lisa, Liz, and Karen were all on tele skis, Norm was using AT gear, and I had my snowshoe/downhill combo. Despite thick lenticular clouds over the summit, the entire route to the summit was in the sun.
It took us about 45 minutes to get to the top of Rainbow Lift. The summit lift was closed and had been the day before. We talked it over, and Liz and Karen decided to ski down to the lodge and climb the lower section again. Norm, Lisa, and I decided to keep going and see what the snow was like above. The winds had been strong out of the west for the past two or three days, so what we found was that the exposed areas like the Beverly Hills run had been wind scoured to the consistency of concrete. But Cows Face around the east side had patches of skiable snow that looked like they could be linked up into a fun run down the mountain. With that in mind, we kept going all the way to the summit.
The last fifty yards before the top of the summit lift, the snow was covered with a carpet of rime ice. It was incredibly beautiful, and we sat in a wind protected pocket below the summit building enjoyed the view and the warmth of the sun. Skiing down through the rime, however, was challenging to say the least. Thankfully, the rime covered area is not too steep and we all made it through without incident. Once onto the ease side, snow was excellent—firm but not icy and a uniform surface without any of the bumps that might grab your skis.
I’m an intermediate skier at best, so I take my time. I expected that I would fall behind the other two, but Lisa kept stopping to rest. She said the snow was a lot harder to ski than she was used to. We went on this way for a while—Norm would zip ahead and wait, I would catch up to him and then Lisa would finally catch up. Lisa is an excellent tele skier so I knew something wasn’t right. She started trying to tell Norm and I to go on ahead, but I was getting concerned and I told her to go ahead and Norm and I would follow. As soon as she started down, I noticed her heel risers were still up. She had skied from the summit through the rime and down a black diamond run with her heel risers up!!! I knew she was good, but wow!
Click here for photos from the day.