October 30, 2005
Nobody replied to my mass email. So I called Dave. Dave was moderately game. I called the Hummels. They reported lots of fresh snow on Rainier. They claimed they skied to the parking lot. I called Dave again, and he was convinced.
Right before I went to bed, I got an email from Bill. So now there were three.
We skinned from the parking lot. I broke a skin tip loop, but fixed it with some cord. The mountain was out, there was fresh, and it was gorgeous. Dave hauled ass up to Muir. Since he was so gung-ho about setting a skin track, I just matched his steps and fell into a skinning trance. We got to Muir, 3:20 from the car. A decent time considering the skinning shenanigans down low. Bill was five minutes behind, and soon we were all shivering in the hut together.
The telemetry says temps at Muir were around 16 degrees, and it sure felt like it. We decided to ski after a while. The snow was good, wind-effected fresh. New liners in the TLT4s made for excruciatingly painful feet, but I enjoyed the turns. After dropping the top 1500 feet I pulled off my gloves to find a totally numb index finger. Damn! Warming my hands in my armpits did the trick, and we continued down.
We were whited-out at Pebble Creek. We skied a lot of rocks for a while, but eventually took the boards off.
Winter is here!
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