This has been a good season. To my list of personal firsts for the season, at the beginning of May I added "ski in Huntington Ravine". Coz and I got up there on May 8th to find a good amount of snow remaining.
Panorama from the floor of Huntington.
Booting up below Central Gully.
Remains of ice in Pinnacle Gully.
Approaching the Central ice, already well above Wildcat.
Just above the glide crack below the ice--crossing was rather sketchy.
Up the ice bulge.
Coz soloing the ice with a single Whippet.
Approaching the top of the skiable snow in Central.
We stepped into our skis in a little cave.
We skied it to the ice, then headed back up.
Enjoying a break after crossing over to the top of Diagonal Gully.
Coz skiing Diagonal.
Through a choke.
Approaching the lowest choke.
Booting up.
Diagonal is among the most unique shots in the Northeast--pretty narrow, rod-straight, with high walls. A goal I've wanted to ski for a long time.
I had a great time skiing these runs. It was satisfying to add a level of technical complexity due to the bottoms of both runs being guarded by ice bulges. The skiing was considerably more relaxed than I expected--Central was not more than 40 degrees where we skied it, and Diagonal may have been 42 or so but no more. Enough to keep you paying attention, but not as hazardous as I had imagined.
Not saying I'd want to do it on ice.
After another break at the top of Diagonal, we crossed the Alpine Garden.
Still lots of snow remaining. Plotting our line--we decided to centerpunch the Headwall, in the opening a couple hundred feet to looker's right of Chute.
World tilting over as we glide across the top of the Headwall.
On a Thursday late afternoon, the Bowl is almost empty.
Then we hiked down to HoJo's, got onto the Sherbie and skied a good 1/4 of the way to Pinkham before the snow ran out.
Skiing is great.
This blog just popped up on my Google NOW app... Great shots! Now the challenge is to make it to next winter.
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