Spring skiing... in January?

Skiing the south side of Flagstaff Mountain, with Mt Superior as the backdrop

A quick report from yesterday (January 29th)... a warm (mid 40s) and sunny day in the mountains. It pretty much hasn't snowed all week, so conditions are variable (to say the least). Still, it was a beautiful day to get out of the city and into the alpine (aren't they all?). We skinned up to Cardiff Pass, booted up to Cardiff Peak, skied down, then went up Flagstaff, took a lap into Upper Days, then back up and over and down the south side (where it was full-on spring corn conditions) to the car. An easy day... we took our time, and focused more on landscape photography (as you can tell by the pictures below!).

We're off to Arizona next weekend for a visit with my parents and an XTerra trail race (15 miler). It should be a blast. Training has been going great... Andrea logged 70 miles in the past week (her lifetime high) and I ran 153 miles (which is just ridiculous). We took today off from skiing (sacrilegious, I know!) to get in another long run and just recover a bit. I can't imagine ski conditions will be too great until we get another foot or two of white gold.

This is a deep-zoom panoramic I shot from the summit of Flagstaff. 15 pictures stitched together. Its pretty cool, but you need to install Microsoft Silverlight to get it to work. Totally worth it if you ask me!


Superior and the Cardiac Ridge


The North side of Little Cottonwood Canyon


Scoping out the terrain below Flagstaff


Andrea switching to bootpack mode for the ascent up to the top of Flagstaff


Hiking up


Kicking a staircase is (honestly) one of my all-time favorite things to do


On Flagstaff with great views all around


Obligatory Diet Dew shot!


Reed & Benson


Honeycomb Cliffs, Grizzly Gulch, Patsy Marley, and Wolverine


Andrea getting ready to drop off the upper Days Fork cirque


Andrea demonstrating the anatomy of a ski crash


Upper Days Fork Cirque. Back in December, we had an amazing day skiing super-deep powder up here.


One more shot of Superior on the way back to the car


Andrea ripping the spring corn snow


I guess this was practice for our Pacific Northwest ski trip... in June!


Down the south side of Flagstaff...


...and back to the car...

... and back home... this is what 24 Liters of Diet Dew looks like! :-)

A few more pictures on my picasa gallery.