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Rocky Mountain Ramblers Association

Trip Report
Trip Date:
30-Nov-2017
Activity:
Off-Trail skiing
Trip name:
Highwood Ridge north slopes
Coordinator:
Carl
Report:
The skiing was so good yesterday that we had to come out one more time.  Five of yesterday's six participants came out to play again, joined by five who were intrigued by my report (short as it was) yesterday.  There wasn't quite as much snow on the north slopes of Highwood Ridge as we had yesterday on Pocaterra Ridge but we had a great time anyway.
We set out from the Highwood Pass parking lot a little after 10.



Setting out from Highwood Pass

 
Most of us had not previously skied the north slope of Highwood Ridge.  We normally pass it by on our way to the south slopes of Pocaterra Ridge or even further to Little Highwood Pass.  At times it has looked too rocky, at times like a possible avalanche zone.  In any case we decided to give it a go, and loved it.  The solid crust from the rain and melt in the previous week had been covered by a few inches of very nice snow that made for easy skiing. We skied down past the normal traverse to the low area around Pocaterra Tarns.



Our skin and lunch spot near Pocaterra Tarns

 
It seemed generally to be brighter than these photos show. We ended up taking four runs of about 150m vertical and pretty much trashing most of the large bowl.  One couple with a dog took two short runs off our uptrack.  Everybody else seemed to have kept on going further up the valley.



Terry

 



Manfred

 



Dave

 



Marg

 



Evan

 



Arnold

 



Carl enjoying the few cms of powder on a real solid widespread rain crust.

 
We were all happy to call it quits at around 2.  A short but very pleasant day.
Many thanks to participants: Terry,Arnold,Nancy,Manfred,John,Margaret,Chip,Dave, and Evan for joining me, Carl (C/S).