July 29-30, 2006,Coleman Pinnacle

Since I'm getting married next weekend, I haven't had much free time this summer.  By proclaiming last weekend my "bachelor's party" I was able to finally snag some ski time.  JasonGerend and I spent the weekend camping and skiing in the area of the Coleman Pinnacle.  Unfortunately the weather broke down just in time for our trip, so I never really saw most of the terrain we were moving through.  Even though 90% of the trail is snow free, it was definitely GPS weather.  We did manage a nice 1200vf run down the E facing drainage directly below the Pinnacle (which runs into Swift Crk).  This is the second continuous snowband (numbered from left to right) in the picture below.  The leftmost line looked quite nice as well but we never quite got around to skiing it. 



Here's a pic of jason exiting from the narrowest part of this line.  Snow on Sat was corn on suncups.  Shallower angles were very nice, steeper/less sun-exposed sections were rattly.  Probably opportunities for continuous lines here for a couple of weeks.



True to the forecast, sometime around midnight it started precipitating.  Instead of "showers", however, it was more like "monsoon".  In the morning rain turned to SNOW (at our camp at 6,000ft) and I started thinking of midsummer freshies.  The new snow skied alright, but was really wet and grabby... 

What we could see was really gorgeous.  I'd like to go back sometime with better visability.