This was my 40th tour this season, and all prior ones have been anywhere from marginal to average at best. This is our worst season on record, with, at this time, a season total of just 97", a pretty hurtful statistic. Having said that, in the last 72 hours, we got 11", so this morning, I went to the northernmost couloir below Wheeler Peak. Actually, to be precise, it is between Wheeler Peak and Mount Walter. I went solo, and I was aiming for summitting Mount Walter. I got really close, but just about 400-500' below the summit, I hit a hollow slab, so I decided to skip the summit (there were no obvious ways to work around that slab without spending an inordinate amount of time post-holing). Instead, I decided to get the best ski out of the almost 3,000-foot drop I was looking down. After all the false alerts from the prior storms, my expectations were low, and I expected the skiing would be OK, i.e., a lot better than the last several outings. But as it turned out, this ski was meant to be the reward of the day and the season. This was, by a gazillion miles, the best ski of the season. I had a foot+ on a highly stable snowpack, and the skiing was absolute world-class! It didn't hurt that I got first tracks; I saw no one else on the entire mountain. Here are some pictures taken from that west face.
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| This is a panoramic view of, from left to right, Lake Fork Peak, Kachina Peak, and in the distance, the Taos resort. |
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| Here is a close-up of Lake Fork Peak. It is finally getting filled up and should be a good ski now. |
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| Here is a close-up of the "backside" of the Taos ski resort |
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| This picture is to give you a sense of how much snow there is on the Wheeler Pk - Mt Walter west face. |
