January 15, 2020
San Juanuary!! Big day in the San Juans for January! Another beautiful day!! Marshell, Casey, and I took the sled up to that impassable spot on Hurricane Pass. From there we skied, dropping into the South face down into Ross Basin. Tossed our skins on and started working up through the North trees. The plan was to hike up the ridge and drop the other side down the West face. On our way up we noticed the “Window” zone was looking like a couple of the shots were filled in and skiable. So we reassessed, decided we would ski the North facing “Window” shot, and recycle our skin track back up! That was a siiiiick line!! A little peppery at the start zone! Kind of had to jump in over rocks and cornice into the steep POWDER!! Beautiful line!! I dropped first and she skied like a beaut!! The three of us ate some lunch, snacks, kooshed a bowl, tossed our skins back on, and headed back up! We gained the ridge up through the lowest angle spot we could find and got on top of our line down the other side!! This line was hot fire!!!! Probably about 1,500ft of skiing!! I dropped first again!! Slowly worked my way in over the wind scoured snow, got into the POW in the mini Christmas trees, and entered my tube!! It was mach tits shredding!! So fast!!! From a far where we left the snowmobile, I noticed at the end of the line if I got on the mini spine I could boost off a cliff that had a perfect diving board pillow!! I saw this from a far so it was a decent size!! As I was getting to the end of my life, going so fast, I got on top of that spine, took a couple turns in unbelievably deep powder pushing tons of snow off both sides, lined up to that diving board, and boosted!!!!! No hesitation!! Saw it and sent it!!! Soooooo dope!!!! Absolutely incredible day!! SLAYING NEXT LEVEL POW LINES SAFELY WITH THE FRIENDS!!!
Snow Report
No new snow. Sunny about 0C. Calm winds. Wind hammered from West-Southwest overnight. Loading on East and Northeast. Orange peel snow skied great!! North facing was mostly facets, but no persistent slab. North POW was best. West was a bit scoured up high, then skied like some nice creamy sun POW with slight crust on wide open faces below treeline. Snow is really lining up safely out here in the San Juans. If it dumps big, lots of things will slide, but for now things N-W-S are skiing relatively safely, especially below treeline! Large natural wind slab avalanche off the East and Southeast face of Brown into Hurricane. Small natural wet slab point releases on rocks on E-S-W faces throughout day as warming. Some moving snow on loaded North slopes while skiing, but could see the loaded spots and was very manageable.
I am no snow expert. We are just out here getting after it everyday and I would love to share my observations to the beautiful ski community!! Be safe! Take faceshots!! Colorado Avalanche Information Center is a great resource: https://avalanche.state.co.us/
Ski Bum Philosophy 