Last night was another three inch day on top of yesterday’s ‘three inches’, so we decided to skin up to Walton Peak - old reliable - again. The second that we pulled into the parking lot, I knew we were in for a day of it. The snow on the trail was up to my waist standing there, I kid you not. So light that there was no point in trying to pull your feet above it to skin, we broke trail by plowing through the lightest snow I have ever seen in my life. And there was a lot of it. So much in fact that it took us two hours to skin a mile and a half and we were swapping the lead almost every 5 steps near the top.
The descent was so worth it. The method was to point straight, close your eyes, and hold your breath. When you did need to breathe, you stopped, but since your eyes were closed and your facial area was now completely full of snow, you couldn’t really tell if you were still moving. The snow billowing around our heads was so intense that every run we needed to pull the snow out of our coats. We stayed out and took laps until we thought that we would freeze if we stayed out any longer, then we went down.
On the way out we passed ten people on their way up. They asked if we broke the trail. Yup, we replied, and we take a trail tariff. One of the girls looked at us and replied umm, I have pretzels. Pretzels? I was ready to eat a whole cow by the time we got to the car.
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