<\/a><\/p>\nThe summit was nothing too special on this day, views all around were obscured and there was a cornice keeping us from looking into that portion of the east face so we clinked axes and walked right back down to where the cornice gives up and allows us onto our ski line. After busting some rime, we couldn’t find a rock we could lasso so Ian braced himself behind the uncooperative rock and belayed me in. After a few cuts and turns it was apparent the wind slab that had stopped us the day previous was not on this side of Sugarloaf. So I unclipped and skied an awesome face yet in great consolidated pow and cloud. At the bottom, there was: surprise (not really): a bergshrund to navigate. Using my picture from yesterday and some mental gymnastics, I found the zipper crack I meant to use and emerged on a sunny glacier. Ian had a great run too and we went back toward camp. We tried climbing some nameless slope for an extra run further down the glacier, but found uninspiring snow and a run that just couldn’t hope to provide satisfaction compared to what we just had.<\/p>\n
Day 4: The Escape<\/h2>\n
We decided to wake up a little bit late, since we would be spending a lot of time standing around not producing heat while tearing down camp. After it was all cleaned and packed up, we skied back down the way we came onto the old bed of the Duncan Glacier. Skiing was good with the big packs for a bit, and then snow quality got bad slowly but surely. Oh right, that’s why I camped on a glacier for the past three nights… I picked up my sled on the way down, it started like a champ as always. I sledded down the slidepath to catch up with Ian and towed him back across the swamps and up to the end of the logging road.<\/p>\n
With Ian not having his sled, I was planning on taking both packs on my sled until we reached his again, but I wasn’t completely sure I’d be able to take the machine all the way up with >100 pounds of dead weight on the back trying to tip me over. I thought I might run out of gas if I shuttled each pack up and tandemed Ian up. In reality it was for the best, the stopping power I would have had for descent to pick up another load with the fresh snow was a far cry from the crust we descended three days ago. Despite the fresh snow, I was able to maneuver the obese pig all the way up. After a little nap Ian caught up on skins and the fun really started.<\/p>\n
This mission is huge for a guy who only got sledding in the mountains only this year. Many sledders with many more years on the machine and much less gear to haul wouldn’t drop into the far side of nowhere, as things can go very wrong very quickly. So I was really, really surprised at how well things had gone so far. Except for Ian’s machine not being good enough, everything had gone to plan so far…<\/p>\n
Getting Ian’s sled out of the last few draws out to the main sled area of Silent pass was a chore. I broke in the trail for Ian to follow, but if he didn’t make it and needed a bit of help bringing it around, I decided I couldn’t afford the gas to loop around for him, as running out of gas out here was definitely a very bad thing. So I would walk down and help shovel and pull, and slowly we got out.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nOn one pull however, there was a bit of side hill to it. After Ian almost got out, I, in my brilliance decided to sled down to help him, and ended up missing the side hill just as he had, but wasn’t able to stop like him and ended up full into a tree, sled pointing 45* downhill with a ski on either side. After lots of digging and swearing and pulling, we got it back onto a platform and sent it down to the next bench thru a small breach between trees. How I didn’t break something on the sled, I will never know, I just know I got a tiny taste of the fear of things going very wrong in the wrong place. We shoveled a bobsled run down so that Ian’s sled wouldn’t be magnetized to my tree and got the sleds back to the bench safely. After that we both got up that pull, and up the remaining pulls with only a couple minor stucks.<\/p>\n
Truly, an incredible adventure of a ski trip.<\/p>\n