Here it was the weekend before finals and the only right thing to do was to go skiing. Ben and I had been trying to get into the backcountry all winter, but the dismal snow pack this winter was of no help. The previous weekend we had hopes of heading to the High Peaks, but got shut out from weather (we thought was going to be a lot worse). Itching to do a tour we knew that we had to go this Saturday even if we got into the slide and had to turn around. It would be our last opportunity with the low snowpack this season and Ben heading off to Utah and me to the Chic Chocs in the coming week. After looking at maps, google earth and some Internet searching we had determined our route to the slide. This would be both of our first tours in the High Peaks with our destination Angel Slides on Wright Peak.
Left from school at 5:30am Saturday morning and made it to the trailhead at LOJ a little before 8:00am. We even got a surprise 6 inches of light snow overnight that really helped everything. After prepping all of our gear, we heading off on the trail that barely held enough snow to skin up from the bottom. Without the new snow the lower sections of the trail would have been pretty boney. Once we got up to Marcy Dam the snow pack became much deeper thankfully. Skied out onto the lake were Ben and I caught our first glimpse of Angel Slides and many more slides off in the distance that we hope to ski one day. We were siked to see the slides knowing that our goal was in reach now. Luckily a skin track was already put in, which we followed all the ways up to the base of the slide. With out the skin track it would have been an adventure for us to find our own way up. Arrived at the top of the wide slide at about 11:45am after having a nice chat with the guy who put in the skin track (Thank You!) giving us some beta on the conditions. The snow was stable and we were treated with 6 inches of dust on crust and some ice beneath. A couple weekends before our trip, the wide slide had slide taking a good portion of snow off the slide exposing some of the ice. Ben and I could not have been more amped to finally ski down after having a quick lunch and to be able to finally mark our first Adirondack slide off our checklist. That would be our only run of the day because I ended up getting a migraine on the start of our second skin up. At that point it was time to head out before my head started to pound to bad. I would do anything to find a cure for migraines. But that one run was unreal and was all that was needed to give us some shit eating grins.
While the rest of the school was busily studying for finals thinking that no more snow existed Ben and I scored some face shots in the Dacks, which was a great trip minus the migraine.
Ben.
Angel Slides from Marcy Dam.
The new slide from Irene.
Mountains and More 