Skied to Lake Serene yesterday with my buddy Pete who is visiting. (He's from Princeton where he's doing plasma physics grad school after graduating from the A&A Dept a few years back. Here in Seattle, he's doing some research with our plasma physics group.) It was an excellent ass kicking trip. We took a fork to see Bridal Veil falls first. It wasn't cold enough for perfect ice climbing conditions, but some guys were up there giving it a whirl.
After that, we got going up to Lake Serene. The two miles from the fork to Lake Serene was killer. Very steep. Deep snow. Pete had snowshoes and wore out his quads plowing up through the deep snow. I had trouble on the very steep parts and had to get off my skis a few times.
We arrived at the Lake around 2 pm. The view at the top was quite possibly worth the effort. In the pic below, the lake is to the left of me and I'm pointing up at Mt. Index (out of pic).
As we started down there was a great photo op and I handed my camera to Pete for a pic. He promptly tipped over backwards. He took this photo from his prone position.
Temps hovered around 20 deg. Peak altitude was 2500 ft -- I really enjoyed the thick air relative to some of my other exploits this year. My new "alpine touring" (AT) skis were champs. (AT skis are like telemark skis with optional heel lockdown for downhill mode.) This was my first trip on them. Going downhill, I didn't use the heel locking feature because the ability to climb here and there was required. I kept skins on most of the time. New boots have nice stiff feel that allows great control when going downhill. With my old setup I would've fallen over backwards and wiped out with much higher frequency.
Great way to earn supper.
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5 comments:
stout outing
good that skis worked well.
w deep snow on steep trail what was avalanche danger?
i see trees so apparently not a wide open monotonous slope over 30 d. which is typical.
nice pics and waterfall shot.
remember danger of snow holes into snow bridges 50 feet above stream bed which are wafer thin near the waterfall?
like on Mt. Temp
steve
practically zero avy danger with the tree coverage there. lake was only 2500 ft. didn't see any major avy paths.
not near enough snow to build high snow bridges.
Beautiful snow pics. Sounds a little too difficult for my cross country abilities :), but nice for you tough guys.
This looks completely insane to me, but then I have no coordination going downhill on anything slippery! You are definitely Steve's son.
To answer your question earlier, I took the picture of the moon, venus and jupiter by hand (amazing, huh?) No tripod, just a night shot with my zoom lens. I did lean up against the door jamb and just shot from the house.
looks great, psyched that the backcountry is opening up.
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