It was like a broken record : back at Porter Fork, 10F lower. This time the aim was to see if the tracks on Gobblers were as good as they appeared from the other side of the drainage the previous day.
It was so cold. For fun I brought along my thermometer to see how cold it really was. At 8,500 ft, in the middle of a mid-ascent bushwhack (we went the wrong way), it reached -10F. At that point getting the thermometer ceased to be fun, so away it went. Needless to say, I didn't get the camera out either!
Approaching the not-summit with Raymond in the background.
Looking over at the Twins and Broads Fork.
Following a nice lunch on the false summit, reached in 3 1/2hrs from the TH, we headed over to the real summit. Since lookers right of the NW face was a bit tracked, we decided to ski the lower angle on the far left. The skiing off the summit was quite terrible. A mixture of sastrugi (where there was snow!) and some hideous crusts. Below 9,600 it seemed to get a bit better.
We continued skiing down through the Aspens, finding some nice protected powder. We then ascended back up to midslope to ski the line again.
From our ascent route, we knew that the standard exit was going to be a bit of a chore, so in our infinte wisdom, we decided to follow our existing drainage (Pole Canyon) down to the Cabin Road. Until we hit 8,000' this seemed a great idea. There then followed 1,000' ft of progressively worse bushwhacking (shades of the Crows Feet!), including sideslipping through some impossibly narrow chokes. An hour to get down, but quite an adventure.