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Rocky Mountain Ramblers Association

Trip Report
Trip Date:
29-Nov-2017
Activity:
Off-Trail skiing
Trip name:
South slopes of Pocaterra Ridge
Coordinator:
Carl
Report:
The skiing was awesome today! So I called a return to the area for tomorrow (before the highway closes on Friday).  In the end five out of six came out again the following day.
I was a little worried about what the ski conditions would be like after warm temps and rain 6 days and 3 days earlier.  But all of that made for a very supporting layer and we had 4-8 inches of fresh snow on top of that crust. The crust shielded us from the rocks below and the fresh snow had bonded to the it.  The fresh snow was more creamy than powdery so on the descents we barely felt the supporting layer.
There were four or five K-Country Safety Officer and Conservation Officer vehicles in the Highwood Pass parking lot.  So we expected to see quite a crew out there.  When we got to the bottom of Pocaterra Ridge we saw that there were only six of them and they were busy doing some snow safety training. And so we had Pocaterra Ridge to ourselves (for a while).  We climbed to the top of the treeline for our first run.  



Richard

 



Chip

 
At the start of our second run, we ran into Rambler Carolyn (I think that's right), and Marianne A. and Mark S. (both well known to a number of Ramblers). We saw no one else all day.  Lunch was had at our skin up spot after the second run (from a little higher spot).  The third run was down the steeper slopes shown in the following photo.



John

 Our final run was down a narrow gully between our previous runs. 



Near the top of our runs (window in east ridge of Tyrwhit visible)

 



John again

We had pretty much trashed the slopes in the area and so we headed back for home.  



Return home, south slopes of Pocaterra Ridge (now trashed) in bkg


We skied from a little before 10 until around 2.
Many thanks to participants: Arnold,Manfred,John,Chip, and Richard, for joining me Carl (C/S).