During our first day in the trees, it kept snowing. Not a lot, but enough to fill in the tracks and soften the turns all afternoon. Towards the end of the day, we were skiing with Cheryl, who likes the trees and fresh snow well enough, but was looking for something easy to end the day.
After lunch at the snack counter in the day lodge at the base of Long Shot, we barreled up the Two Creeks lift, and onto Elk Camp. The day before, when Annie rented her board, the girl in the shop talked up “The Wall”. Code name for Hanging Valley Wall, this is an open face shearing down nearly 1000 vertical feet to the northeast, cleared of trees either by the fire or by avalanches, or probably both. The Elk Camp lift has a bird’s eye view of the Wall, off to the left.
“See, that’s the Wall,” I explained to her.
“Wow, that looks tough. Do you think I can do it?”
“Sure; it’s steep, but there’s not a lot of trees, and a snowboard will handle the snow pretty well. We can go there tomorrow if you want. The hardest part is dropping in through the headwall gully up above there, just between the cliffs.”
She grunted uncertainly.
We neared the top. The snow obscured the great view up there, so we headed for the day’s “noon groom”, Bear Bottom, in the little valley below the Wall. This area used to be Cheryl’s favorite set of runs. Protected from the winds, gentle, but with lots of curves, whoop-de-doos, and tree patches left in the middle of the runs, it offers a sense of isolation, of wildness, but with a very tame slope and conditions. And, it has a series of hidden tree runs, between the marked ones.
Since this is basically a low-intermediate chair, hardly anyone ever ventures into these patches, and there is always snow, sometimes for days after a dump. The trees are not really thinned out at all, but the elevation is high enough that undergrowth is non-existent, and the trees grow far enough apart that, given the shallowness of the slope, it is a manageable trip.
We tried the trees off of Grey Wolf, skier’s left, down the steep slope towards Gunner’s View. This is a double fall line, and the trees are wide apart. We picked our way through, and hit the gentler slopes midway, swooping in and out at the edge of the packed slope.
“We’ve got to do that again!” shouted Annie at the bottom, after a high five for the sheer joy of it.
So back up we go, this time falling down into the Sandy Park chutes, aiming for the apex where Bear Bottom splits off from Gunner’s view. This patch of trees proved … simply heavenly. Most turns, I would brush the evergreen branches. Every ten turns or so, in the upper third, we’d drop out onto a narrow cat track, then flop back into the ten foot high forest. Most of the spaces were either filled in, or totally fresh. Turns were quick, and if you missed, you had to stop and start up again, putting a premium on not missing any beats.
The flattish light of the early January late afternoon snow squall disappeared within the woods. The greens stood out garishly, a peripheral blur as we smoked and slithered our way in between. We moved mostly with our middles, keeping feet and shoulders calm, and using our cores to twist side to side and drop up and down. Sometimes the space was so tight, I had to fight my way through, throwing one or both hands out front to become narrow enough to fit. The soft snowflakes on my face kept me from overheating, and my helmet came in handy every now and then as I ducked under or around a misplaced branch.
Later, in the hot tub watching the sun ever so briefly pop out for a last gasp before dying below the ridge, I realised I’d never skied exactly that tree run before. The snow was perfect, the spaces were perfect, and Annie never missed a turn behind me. I’d stop, and there she’d be, beaming, almost laughing at the joy of movement.
We hit those trees again at the end of the next day, and the next. By the third time around, the snow had stopped falling, and our speed downhill rose precipitously. Not as much fun, but exhilarating nonetheless, for it being that much harder.
I’ve only named a few runs on the mountain. There’s Dave’s Run, a sneaky route through the trees at the top of the Burn, heading across the face down into – whatever you want to do on the bottom third. There’s Wipeout Hill, the treacherous cliff my sister and I confronted on the bunny slope when we were just learning the ropes. (Now, it’s hard to tell it apart from the cat track that leads into it). There’s my run, which meanders from the very top, over the Headwall, into the Dikes, and then swoops through Pinball Alley and the creek below it, ending at the Sheer Bliss lift after nearly 3000 vertical feet of off track heaven. There’s The Sidehill, a small patch just ABOVE my run, right after the spot where Sheer Bliss run drops onto the Trestle cat track. This one is a sharp right turn UPHILL, then a quick up unweight to the left and two more turns down the face, back to the right onto the cat track. It is purely for show, my little version of the X Games.
And now, there is Annie’s Trees, just tight enough for a 5’5’’ snowboarder to snake through and remain upright and jubilant.