nordic Xmas

I went out Xmas morning for a short out-and-back to Windy Pass. The outbound trip was a gradual but climb (never had to leave the tracks) up 1100 feet along the E side of Mt Catherine to Windy Pass. We could have continued around the mountain at that point, but decided to double back to take advantage of the obviously cruisable downhill most of the way back. There were a few blind corners where I had to leave the tracks, but otherwise you can ski the tracks all the way back down too. It was a pretty good workout but the skiing was easy.

But the best thing about the trip was the view we had of the Olallie Meadows/Nordic Pass area. I've definitely got to drag my telemarks up there sometime next month. There is plenty of easy to intermediate telemark terrain up there, and although there a couple of avalanche slopes, they probably aren't too bad if there's been no sun for weeks and it's early in the day, etc. But I'll have to follow the avalanche condition reports for a while to make sure I guess.

So this weekend it's going to be working on solid technique on the blues, and then I guess a couple of weekends inbounds skiing black and working on mixing up tele and alpine turns. Then I think I head out into the backcountry for some honest telemarking (not to mention cheaper).

I have to admit though that slogging up 4 miles of nearly glidable nordic uphill is probably a pretty good workout for skinning. It's the same basic idea: get as perpendicular to the slope as you can. That plus the edgeless downhill made this quite a bit more fun that my last nordic outing.