Las Lenas 9/10/08

Today we went to ski one of my favorite coulairs in Lenas. It is about a 1.5 hour skin to the entrance of the coulair. This is the view from the top. Isn’t she beautiful?

The snow is still a little weird in Lenas right now due to the cold temps and of course the wind. We expected the top of the coulair to be breakable crust, but hoped that once we were in we might find some corn.

As expected, my first three turns were breakable crust. Did I mention how much I like breakable crust, especially when I’m dropping into a steep coulair. Everything was going pretty well until my fourth turn. On my fourth turn the snow started to move, not super fast, but still started to move. I made one more hop turn and tucked myself next to some rocks. When I reached my safety zone, I turned around to see all of entire slope slide past me. This is not the best pic, but maybe you will get the idea.

The slide wasn’t scary. It was a slow moving wet slide, but it did continue all the way down the 3,000 foot coulair. And then we were left with a lot bed surface to ski.

Skiing the bed surface of a slide isn’t that much fun. As we skied to the middle of the coulair we found some protected snow in the shade that was almost like skiing pow, It had a little crust on the top of it, but pretty good snow.

It was nice to find some good snow!

The coulair eventually choked again. We were forced to ski more bed surface and the breakable crust right next to the slide. Did I mention breakable crust is hard to ski. I wish I had brought the Kuros. They rip in breakable.

All and all we had a great day! We skied one of my favorite coulairs in Lenas. I’m not sure what is going to happen to the snow in the next couple of days. It is so close being corn, but a storm has moved into Lenas. Maybe we’ll being skiing powder tomorrow.