LA Wilder Ski Trips - Downhill from Tronson Meadows December 31, 2007
Dave and I had a fabulous day skiing up the road just before the main Tronson Meadows parking along Blewett Pass. Wow, the sun was out and the sky was so blue. The temperature was cold enough to keep the snow nice and dry, but not too cold. It's funny that when I was skiing yesterday (Sunday) in the same area, I didn't see any animal tracks. However, today we saw lots of animal tracks. I swear they know when it's the weekend and hunker down to avoid the tourists! We saw tracks from mice, squirrel, rabbit, coyote, and deer. There was a lot of cool snow drifts across the road we were skiing up. Interesting shapes and textures. We ended up really close to Mt. Lillian, but the road got really steep just before the ridge and we decided it wasn't worth the effort. We've decided we need to get some skins for times like that. We were so close to the ridgetop! What a fantastic day!
It's a little hard to see these formations across the road because of all the shadows, but if you look closely, you'll see swooping waves of snow, some with little caps.
This little snow drift had an interesting lipped edge along the top.
This snow drift had a great little topknot cap and very undercut.
We were amazed at how this corner of the road was almost swept clear of snow with all the snow drift off to the edge of the road. The wind must really whip around this corner at times. There was almost no snow on the road, but probably 2 to 2 1/2 feet of snow in the drifts.
I love the texture of this snow drift with all the layers carved into it.
I received one of those mini tripods with bendable legs for Christmas. So, I decided to try it out on my ski poles. It worked like a charm! It was hard to get to where Dave was posing in time before the camera took the picture. I had to make sure my skis were pointing in the right direction and then I didn't have time to swing my skis around. So I had to twist around so you wouldn't get the back of my head. :-) I didn't realize how much trickier it would be in the snow.
Here's our first great view of the enchantments from the road. About 3 miles up the road.
This was a great view looking across at the enchantments on our way down. You can see the road we were skiing up and a good feel of the elevation. We had to crawl under those trees to get past them, but it wasn't too bad.
Here's a great view of Mt. Lillian from the road. We were so close to it.
