Skiing Balsam Lake Mountain 15/33

 

Balsam Lake Mountain 15/33

Sometimes you need to start off with a catchy quote. My dad said to me today, “Ya know, Julie, you’ve had more injuries skiing than I had in my 3 years in the army, and that includes my year in Vietnam.” I’m fine, nothing happened. He just felt compelled to share that. Guess it’s a dad thing.

Today’s sunlight looked like golden hour the entire day. I did Balsam Lake Mountain with Deborah for 15/33 on my project to ski the Catskills highest peaks. This is also the mountain where Deborah and I met last May.

Like I said yesterday, the Catskills isn’t quite in yet for skiing without risk of seriously damaging your bases, but since the snow is so unpredictable, I ski whatever falls in whatever quantities.

The snow is dense with a high moisture content. There are water bars appearing. My poles don’t even sink to the powder baskets and in the churned up snow, you can see that right underneath is a sheet of water flow ice. I bet an interesting, albeit dangerous, challenge would be to ice skate the high peaks.

Rocks look covered, but they aren’t. If you try to stop or turn to scrub speed you will scrape up your bases like an 80s DJ scrubbing records.

Since I’ve started this project, I’ve focused on becoming efficient in moving through the mountains while keeping my skis on as much as possible. In conditions like this, on terrain that is as mellow and undulating as BLM, it doesn’t make much sense to keep transitioning from skins to downhill mode. It eats up too much time. I’ve just become good at downhill skiing with my skins on. It’s fast and efficient and protects my skis.

Last year, the downhill took forever because I had to figure out where I could turn in tight trenches, sometimes in low tide, with ice, and thick vegetation. I’ve really learned a lot in terms of backcountry problem solving. It reminds me so much of a micro version of the Haute Route.

This gorgeous day in the mountains was punctuated by fantastic company (Deborah) and some good beer No Haze IPA and Hoppy Hour Hero.