March 25, 2005
Paul Belitz, Dietrich Belitz
My dad and I decided to seize the one day of good weather during the entire week I was in Oregon, and we lucked out. Expecting another whiteout trip to the pumice slopes of Mt. Thielsen, we set out with low hopes. A few inches of snow at the trailhead allowed us to skin from the car, but we figured walking down would be a necessity to save our skis.
We skinned up to the PCT junction in sunshine, but when we got to the ridge the clouds started moving in. We stopped in a whiteout at the base of the pumice slopes to eat, expecting to ski down in a whiteout after lunch. Much to our surprise, the clouds broke apart, so we continued up through a foot of powder, and managed to skin all the way to the saddle before the Pinnacle. Skin issues and breaking trail had slowed our pace considerably; we reached our highpoint at 3:30, six hours from the car. Judging by the number of rocks we uncovered while skinning up, I was convinced that the skiing would be miserable for my brand new Atomic R:EXs. But after walking down the first 300 vertical feet of lightly rime and snow covered rocks, we started skiing, and found a foot of hero pow. The clouds stayed away, giving us good visibility, absolutely fantastic skiing, and we even managed to miss all the rocks.
After following our tracks down the ridge, we skied our skin track back through the woods, and, contrary to all expectations, skied to the car with daylight to spare.
Click on the thumbnails below for larger photos. Clicking on one closes the others automatically.
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| Dad skins through the meadows with Diamond Lake in the background. | More of the same. | Me, at our lunch break. |
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| Dad skins the upper slopes with Scott Mtn on the horizon. | Skinning through the snow/rime gullies. | Our high point beneath the summit spire. |
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| Powder below the rime. | More powder, more rime. | It was unbelievable. |
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| Fear of hidden rocks prevented high speeds, | but we managed to have fun anyhow. | I do my best to be an Atomic advertisement. |
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| Back to the ridge and down to the car. |
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