Dookey

With a rare, mid-week 3-day weekend on the books, I loaded up the Taco Mama and headed south to score my August turns. I pulled onto Dunderberg Meadow Road somewhere around 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning (I opted to catch a late night showing of Pacific Rim on the way to the snow) and, after re-arranging the bed of my trusty truck, quickly crashed out. I awoke sometime after 10:30 the next/that morning, packed up the truck and made the 30-minute 4x4 drive up to Jack’s Glacier, where I parked, supped on soaked chia seeds w/ hemp seeds, raw coconut, cacao nibs, and blackberries draped in coconut milk, then gingerly organized my hiking and ski gear. I was mobile by noon and arrived at “Secret Samurai Snowfield” (or “Hidden Samurai Snowfield” depending on your love/hate for alliteration) by 12:30. The snowfield was visibly smaller than the last time I’d been there and was riddled with rivulets that converged into a small, continuous waterfall that fed the pond at the bottom. Despite the obvious melt action, the conditions on the snowfield were a seriously mixed bag of slush, ice, rotten corn, deep sun cups, runnels, and, of course, the previously mentioned streams. My goal was to boot-pack to the top, but I was eventually thwarted 3/4 of the way up by impregnable ice--it got to the point where I couldn’t dig my boots into the snow far enough to insure safe climbing, and being without either crampons or ice axe, and, furthermore, being solo with no cell service (although I had filed a detailed flight plan with my buddies Stev and Mark), I opted to stop where I was and mount up. I used a protruding rock as a platform to click into my skis since I was unable to kick or dig a decent shelf into the ice. My first run consisted of a light slush layer covering edgeable ice. Woot! I boot-packed back up and hit another line of similar conditions. My third, and final lap on the snowfield was semi-legit corn, but it was riddled with some serious, inverted Pam Andersons (deep sun cups). I celebrated my survival with a mackerel and kale gluten free sandwich and a NGB (“No Gluten Beer” from Trader Joe’s--this is pretty shitty “beer” since it’s made with the sweet and stringent sorghum, but ice cold (I had buried it in the snow before I started skiing) it’s passable and even, dare I say, refreshing). After my lunch respite, I hiked back to “Jack’s Glacier” and first skied the left side (similar to my last run on the snowfield). Of note is the fact that while putting on my boots, I dropped one and it slid 4/7 of the way down the run. I put on my other boot and then slowly and cautiously hobbled down to retrieve it. I’ve accidentally lost a ski before, helplessly watching it slide all the way down the hill, but I’d never lost a boot before!. After my first run on “Jack’s”, I decided to ski the center section, which looked like it was nothing but ice. On the way to this run, one of my ski tips got caught in an ice shelf (the conditions here, while similar to those on the snowfield, also featured breakable crust and strange shelves of ice, kind of like how slate shingles itself), which forced me into a genuflecting position that almost caused me to tumble down the slope (this would have been seriously no bueno, as at the end was a 25-foot drop into a shallow glacial pond). Quickly regaining my composure, I made 3 turns down the debatable middle section, then traversed over to the left side and finished out the run safely. I celebrated my survival by pounding no less than 3 GF beers (a Green’s Amber Ale, another NGB, and an Omission Pale Ale) before dinner. I eventually capped the evening off by writing postcards and reading a couple of chapters in my copy of Ian Fleming’s Thunderball.