Dookey

Thursday’s plan was rather simple: bang out at least 2 runs on “Jack’s Glacier”, pack up, and get to Carson City by 7 p.m. to catch the last showing of Iron Man Three. I was awake and organizing my camp and gear somewhere between 9 and 10 a.m. when out of nowhere three dogs--two huskies and a samoyed-- came bounding up and over the ridge and romped into my camp. They were friendly as hell, and in-between nudging me for attention, they all sniffed around and eventually marked everywhere I had peed the night before; dogs will be dogs, eh? A bit surprised, but no less buoyed by their appearance, I immediately wondered where their owner was. As such, I gazed east, from whence they had come, and soon glimpsed a figure emerging over the horizon like Kane from Kung Fu. As the man came closer I hollered a greeting and soon we were shaking hands and exchanging names. His name was Wangdowa, and of all things he was a sherpa from Nepal! I explained that I would be skiing in a bit and he glowed with amazement, then calmly asked if I’d ever been to Nepal. He then began listing off places I should visit if I enjoyed skiing the type of terrain that lay before us. Eventually his wife sauntered by and we said our goodbyes. I went back to organizing my gear and finally motivated myself to go skiing around 10:40 (I was lollygagging in the hopes that the sun would make the snow better than it had been the day before, but the fact that it has been windy and a bit chilly during the night led me to believe that no amount of sun was going to help, plus I was kind of on a schedule). My initial plan was to bang out a mere 2 runs on the glacier and then call it a day, but once on the snow I firmly made the decision to do 5 runs; not because the conditions were tits, but rather just to make the total number of runs for the trip and even 10. I started out on looker’s right, which, by the looks of it, had the best snow and longest strip of snow. I was more or less spot on in my assessment, as, in terns of its consistency it featured pretty decent corn, albeit riddled with copious amounts of deep sun cups. I boot-packed up this section no problem and used the cups like inverted moguls on my first lap. I knocked off 2 runs here and then decided to try the icy center again. I scoped out my line, noticing several large rocks almost evenly spaced down the middle of the glacier. I deemed the run the “Death Slalom”, made one final line selection, and laid down 6 turns before starting my traverse--a mere few feet from the edge--over to looker’s left of the glacier. On my traverse my left pole got jammed in one of those ice shelves I had encountered the day before. Thank goodness I’ve stopped wearing my pole straps, otherwise it would have yanked my arm and quite possibly have twisted me off balance and down, over the edge of the glacier, and 25 feet into the shallow, icy cold waters of the glacial pond resting calmly, but menacingly, at the bottom. Once on the opposite side of the glacier, I hop turned myself around, side-stepped up a few feet, and then traversed back to retrieve my pole, heart pounding all the way. Then it was back to looker’s left, yet again. The conditions on this day were more or less the same as on Wednesday: slushy, icy, breakable crust, etc. I boot-packed up and skied a run, then boot-packed up again, traversed across, and finished out the day with a fifth, and final, schuss down the left side (looker’s right). I enjoyed a leisurely lunch and equally leisurely packing of the truck. Once my gear was satisfactorily stashed, I boiled some water, shaved, and then decided to risk a dunk in the icy waters of “Jack’s Pond”. Refreshed and more or less ready to return to society, I was on the road by 2 p.m. I capped the adventure by celebrating with a chocolate/vanilla swirl soft-serve dipped in chocolate sauce at Jolly Kone in Bridgeport before traveling to Carson City and catching Iron Man Three at the Carson Stadium Theaters (only $3, every show!). And thus, my August earning of turns was complete.