On Monday everything was set up for a big day. The new weekend snow had stabilized, the sun was out, and the temperatures were to remain cold. In short, a perfect day for an assault on the Twins, this time from the Broads side. The only lingering question was whether the high winds had trashed all the new snow. Whilst our experiences at the Spire seemed to suggest otherwise, it might be a very different kettle of fish in the wind-machine known as Upper Broads.
The day didn't start too well with various pieces of kit being left at home / in the car etc. I was feeling quite good, so I charged ahead making it to Upper Broads in a couple of hours. Our vague plan was to ski east off the summit and end up somewhere near the Diving Board. The route down from the summit, shown in the picture below, would be an interesting navigation through glide cracks, cliff-bands, and waterfalls.
It was a bit strange blasting past Bonkers and the Diving Board without any tracks in them. There were a few naturals that had run during the storm including one off the waterfall.
As I was ahead of the rest of the party (when does that happen?) I put in a quick lap on the NE facing part of Upper Broads. Absolutely perfect settled powder with no sign of wind-damage. When the others turned up, we cranked out another lap. It was so good, it was quite tempting to ditch what was about to happen next.
The route from the saddle between O'Sullivan and The Twins is a fairly simple scramble along a knife edge ridge. It certainly looks a lot worse than it really is.
The only annoying bit is a section which requires a few moves up a rock slab. This avoids the most exposed part of the ridge. I was having none of that: having fluffed it, I went for the LM variation, which involves booting up a directly S-facing couloir, usually in the middle of the day.
Not the safest place to be, but better than dealing with the rock slab.
Almost there, with a good reminder of how bad the Maybird exit is in the background.
The last part of the summit ridge.
JF just below the summit.
And then we were there. On the summit of the Twins for the second time in bluebird conditions with no wind. Lots to gawk at, including Timp and the Pfeiff.
Getting ready to descend.
Standing on the summit, you know that the first turn is not going to be good. It's the next 20 that count.
Time to drop!
The view skiing down is spectacular.
After a couple of turns on bulletproof, again, amazingly, there was powder in the NW.
We wanted to ski the E-face so we quickly traversed out of the NW to get back above Broads.
Dropping in, after a couple of junky turns, there was powder.
We navigated our way down the E-face, doing our best to avoid the various hazards. Big scenery everywhere.
The E-face was a great line: consistent powder at a moderate pitch = rip turns. Eventually we joined in with the rest of the riff-raff on the Diving Board.
The lower section of the Diving Board. No prizes for guessing which turns were mine.
The plan at this point was to exit via Stairs Gulch, chucking in a lap on Bonkers or whatever was needed to reach the soon-to-be-mandatory-10k-hurdle. Whilst this all seemed like a good idea, climbing Bonkers I started to feel quite violently ill. I struggled on for a bit, but soon had to abort with JF, leaving TB and NA to capture the prize. The exit via Broads wasn't that enjoyable, though after I puked a few times, it felt a bit better. We then sat in the Porcupine for 90 minutes, both in a bit of a daze, but feeling quite good about the fact that we were not bushwhacking our way through Stairs in the dark!
All in all, another spectacular ascent of the Twins with fantastic skiing. The only downer was the fact that I felt completely crap: no idea why, I just did.