Ah, ski season!
Looking up to Corbet's and the S&S. If you zoom way in maybe you can see our tracks.
Skinning up the ridge above the AV chair.
Looking across to the S-facing wall of Granite Canyon...that's the sunny side of the canyon, but there's probably plenty of snow on the shady side...right?
A view of the extremely awesome Buck Mountain, with Static in the foreground.
The knee-wrenching talus we needed to negotiate to approach the entrance was not a good sign.
We worked our way down to get a view of Mile Long. It was not impossible, but highly marginal at best. It was ugly enough that I apparently didn't even take a photo to document it. We could have skied it, but would have hit some rocks, and the snow was really mank. Considering it would commit us to a significant schlep on dirt/mud to get back to the village, we declined. We headed up and out the way we came in.
We did a little more snowpit practice for the fun of it near the ridge top.
Alex ripping excellent corn before turning right into the Crags area.
We trended rather far right, trying to just follow the snow where it would take us, but unfortunately this was a total minefield of rocks. Eventually it got too thin and we hiked on dirt back to a more consistent groomer.
Ripped it out on the last groomer, including this last little "appendix" of snow. Good to the last drop.
After we got back to the condo, we did a very quick turnaround, and headed up to the GTNP Visitor Center to get a camping permit. We got a very informative rundown from the rangers about where we'd be allowed to camp (anywhere, with permission!) . We were weighing the relative merits of going for the Skillet on Moran, vs doing something more free-form in Avalanche Canyon, but eventually settled on our Plan A of Moran. We got our permit and bear cans, and got ready to head out the next day.
