Albino Fish

By:  Sam
January 6, 2011


Well, Allen and I finally spent a little time getting aquatinted with the other giant mountain our our back door. On the final day of high pressure, a day when I was supposed to work, it was decided that Chris (my boss), Allen, and I would head up Shuksan to ski a run on the White Salmon Glacier. As far as days on Shuksan go, skiing the White Salmon is about as pedestrian as it gets, but I was pretty excited to spend a little time getting aquatinted with her anyway.


Allen was also excited.

In my short career as a backcountry skier, I’ve come to the profound realization that despite all the hype about “first tracks”, the real game to play is “second tracks”. First tracks are nice at the resort, and they certainly get all the glory in the BC, but when you’re hiking for turns, not burning up all your energy breaking trail on the ascent can mean either more vertical or faster climbs. Naturally, by this point you’ve concluded that Allen, Chris, and I didn’t get first tracks that day. You would be correct. We didn’t even get second tracks, but on the White Salmon, a face as wide as a Deer Valley groomer, it doesn’t really matter much.


Rapid warming meant that Shuksan was grumpy.


We were well out of firing range though, and proceeded speedily up the skin track without too much concern for the huge chunks of ice falling off the glacier(second tracks, remember).

At this point we could see the weather changing, the clouds were coming down and it was beginning to snow lightly. Speed was clearly the order of the day, so we motored up to the top and began to change over.


Chris and Allen making their way up the final stretch.

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Read about the author:   Sam
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  5. Shuksan: Second Day of Summer

One Comments

  1. Chris
    wrote on January 9th, 2011 at 8:21 pm  
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