Best Winter Weather Stories

Have an interesting or epic climbing story? Post it here.
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Monte Meals
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Joined: 5/16/2011
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Best Winter Weather Stories

Post by Monte Meals »

Several years ago I skied (solo) to the top of Sherman.
(Full disclosure - I don't remember the exact date and it
could have been in calendar spring.)

The weather was mixed with bands of snow pulsing on and off
all day.

I hit the summit early, took my skis off, laid down and just watched
the bands of snow roll in and cover me for about an hour. AWESOME !

On the return trip to the winter road closure, I dropped into the completely frozen
stream next to the road and "half piped" for miles back to my car.

I never saw a single person the entire day.

That memory will last me a lifetime.
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SolarAlex
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Re: Best Winter Weather Stories

Post by SolarAlex »

There are so many that come to mind, but probably the all timest was when we caught the silver couloir a couple aprils ago after 20" of new snow... Earlier that week, we did the 3am wakeup for another storm, broke trail the entire way up in 12" of new snow, only to have a thick ice fog roll in when we were 5 minutes from the entrance. We sat up there for 2 hours freezing our nuts off, and it never cleared. After a lot of debate, we ended up skiing down the east face in incredible, albeit very low vis conditions. Of course it cleared as soon as we made it back to the full parking lot. We both had to work that day (at a local backcountry ski shop) and had multiple people come in talking about how they had the best turns of their lives in the silver that day...at least we got to break trail the whole 3000' up there for them.

But then we got another bigger storm, and it came in perfectly right side up. We got up there first, the weather cleared and we had 3000' of knee to thigh deep blower all to ourselves. Truly euphoric. I got face shots the whole way down, top to bottom. Doubtful that will ever be topped.
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jibler
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Re: Best Winter Weather Stories

Post by jibler »

My favorite winters are the really crappy ones where no snow falls and you can keep accessing the high country


sucks for drought - but at the time it is good
Keep looking up - Jack Horkheimer
jibler
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Re: Best Winter Weather Stories

Post by jibler »

Keep looking up - Jack Horkheimer
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