soloing

After eleven days in a row of skiing, including six straight days of telemark work, H wasn't so sure he wanted to ski on Sunday.  And when he looked at the webcams and out the window, confirming the gathering clouds and flattening light, his mind was made up: he was going to take the day off.  Since I hadn't been skiing for eleven days, I went up by myself (after confirming that there wasn't going to be any snowfall to make the canyon drive treacherous).

What a difference a couple days make, at least as far as temperatures go!  We'd had a run of quite cold weather but Sunday was practically balmy, in the 20s to start and, with no wind to speak of, reaching well into the 30s despite the cloud cover.  I ended up having to go back to the car midday to shed a layer, as well as discarding my hand warmers - almost unheard of for me, especially in January.

View off the back from Catherine's Area

I had an okay solo day.  There weren't many people there so I even got to ride a few chairs on my own.  I started with a warm-up run on Collins, then switched to Sugarloaf for several runs, including one through Amen, which H and I never ski.  I had to back up off a potentially-cliffy spot although after skiing around it, it was merely short and steep and I definitely could have skied it had I known what it looked like.  I spent most of my day on Supreme, of course, and did a couple of runs in Catherine's Area - which prompted the layer shedding - including going all the way in to my favorite part near Catherine's Pass, which was skiing a little chunky from the bombing ski patrol had done earlier in the week.  There were a few backcountry skiers there, skinning their way uphill, and we all cheerfully said hello to each other.

Sunset Peak, with the Heber Valley in the background

Before the day was out, I had also done a Cabin Run and a run through the gate at the bottom of Rock N' Roll.  The light started getting very flat around 1:00 p.m., however, and the decreasing visibility eventually drove me off the mountain.