Are we going this time?

The week end is (finally) in sight... and looks nice! I feel I haven't seen the sun for the last two weeks. Work, then rain, then.. work again! Powder sugar on the top of the mountains on Monday was a pleasant surprise. But maybe not ready to go skiing yet.

The trip I missed on Ajax was apparently a little rough, very, very icy. Am I ever going to get the pics? I don't know.

It might be the right week end for that trip the Norwegian Connection and I have been postponing for more than a year now... NC was VERY ambitious last summer and said he wanted to climb all the summits of the Bitterroot visible from the valley before leaving. All we did  was maybe 2 or 3 hikes (...). Time is flying, we're all busy, so he revised his plan. 

Now it's down to 1 hike! And we've talked about it all summer trying to find the moment where we'd both be in town, and ready.

Our plan is to climb and follow the Romney Ridge, between Canyon Creek and Blodgett Canyon, all the way to High Lake. Camp there, maybe try to go up Canyon Peak (maybe not) and then hike back via Canyon Creek. Last week was rainy and stormy, but what about this week end?

It might be a little chilly.

And we might not make it all the way since 1) we don't know what the "trail" is going to be like, 2) we will start late on Saturday since we have to say goodbye Friday to J-Boogie who is leaving us for the Ugly Man.

Well, I'll just say this is the plan and we'll see what happens.

titidi...

Looks like the announced trip is not going to happen. I let the guys leave without me today, because I ended up having important "social obligations"... and a little bit of work to do as well...

Oh well. I should get pictures from their trip though. Small consolation.

Back on tracks

The last time I skied this year was on July 13th. This means that on saturday, I'll have taken 2 months off. What a good time to get back on my favorite transportation mode!

I know it might not be the best snow of the year (hopefully) but I hear it calling me already. Last year's total was 35 days. This year, I will try to do better, and in any case go at least 32 days.

So Saturday, we'll head to the Big Hole, spend the night on the shore of Ajax Lake, and plan on skiing Ajax peak (10078) on Sunday. I'm going to have to reopen the ski shop...

King of the Bitterroot

It's funny how this picture makes me feel discombobulated... I have to stop and look at it remembering where I took it to remember that, no, it is not upside-down.

I am actually sitting on top of Trapper Peak, 10157 ft, looking down at Cave Lake. You can see it if you look between the cloud on the right and the cloud at the bottom. Behind, a  ridge looking like a wall, separates Trapper Creek from the North Fork.

The hike up the highest peak of the Bitterroot is not a difficult hike. It climbs for about 4.2 miles, with an elevation gain of about 3800 ft from the trailhead, but, even though the start is scary, every steep fragment is followed by a little plateau, allowing us to recover before the next big effort. The end of the hike requires a little bit of scrambling on sometimes moving rocks - but again nothing terrible. Of course, one has to consider then who one hikes with: it can totally change the difficulty of the hike... 

Well my super-fit friends (I haven't found nicknames for all of them yet so I won't list the members of the happy party I went hiking with), who had just done an olympic distance triathlon the day before while I was probably watching TV laying on the couch, made my day a little harder since I had at some times a hard time keeping up with them.

The effort was worth it, despite the big cloud cover:

Here is the bowl between North Trapper Peak (to the left) and the East Trapper Peak (to the right) that I hope to ski before I leave the valley...

Here a little clearer view of the East Peak, and closer, the false peak preceding Trapper Peak, were most of the scrambling happens.

And finally, when the weather was cooperative enough, we could get a quick look at the Bitterroot Wilderness to the west of the peak.

The chilly temperatures chased us quickly from the summit. Fortunately, since the only two muscles I have happen to be my quads,  my downhill hike turned out to be much faster and smoother... And of course, by the time we reached the trailhead, the sky was (almost) blue and the sun shining. So we did what anyone else would have done in the same situation: we went to the Brewery.