Albright? Allllriiiggghhht!

I found myself at the top of Wimpys, three out of four days last week. Some people may think it’s lame to ski the same run all the time, but when it nuking winds and dumping a foot of snow a day, who can blame me for heading to slopes I’m familiar with and I know will be full of untracked powder.

Kind of a smorgasborg of trips really. One day I got out with some skiers in town for the rando races, Kevin and Molly, one trip was alone and in the late afternoon. On Friday though, I was lucky to get out with Dustin Lemke after not skiing together for some time. It was great too, since on Friday there was a brief break in the weather.

I think only 6” were reported on the avy forecast that day, but the danger was up to considerable with high winds and snowfall totals increasing regularly for the previous few days. On the drive up to the park, some natural avalanche activity was seen in the Banana Couloir on Prospector’s and the lower East Face of Buck Mountain. With the bluebird skies, we had hopes of skiing Albright (aka, Peak 10,552), not a huge peak, but a great high speed powder run non-the-less.

The big winter is starting to take it’s toll on the park infrastructure and the Death Canyon trailhead sign is feeling the weight. The tour up to Wimpys and the on to Albright felt great…with the warm sun and all. My sensors came to attention though as we crossed under the upper face of Albright, looking for signs of instability in the snowpack, but the snow felt pretty solid. We removed our skis and booted the final pitch to the top.

I was glad I had broke most of the trail to the top, so there was no argument about who got to go first. The snow was as good as it gets and after a couple ski check at the top, linking high-speed powder turns was the focus for the next 3000′. Still early in the day, we did another lap up Wimpys and ran into Shoeless Greg at the top…who ripped it just like us.