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Continued...
Back at the col, we put on our skis and dropped in one
by one. As I jump-turned my way down the length of
the couloir I was reminded of what attracted me to
telemark skiing in the first place – that graceful
feeling of weighting and unweighting, rapid lead
changes and dancing with the corn snow. Many more
blissful turns down the glacier and a high traverse
deposited us atop the wide finger of snow leading
1,000’ down to the second Conness Lake. We spread the
glacial butter all the way down to the frozen lake; the
silence of the mountain environment was disturbed only by the quiet
hiss of freshly schralped snow and the occasional
spontaneous outburst of unmitigated glee. This was a
good day.
We refilled our dry water bottles with glacial runoff
and I took a quick catnap on the sunny rocks lining
the lakeshore. A quick portage over some slabs led us
to the small drainage below the GPS chute, from where
we were able to ski between the granite domes back to
camp over nearly continuous but increasingly suncupped
snow. It was a long but successful day after starting
out way down on the Tioga Road. Matt was sore all
over; I was a dehydrated mess. As the daylight faded
behind the North Ridge of Conness, both of us were
thinking the unsaid: How would we have the energy for
a encore performance tomorrow? Matt finally broke the
silence.
“You know what concerns me? Your friend Chris
seems pretty hard core. He’s going to come in tomorrow wanting to
charge.” I had to admit it was true, since in
the last two years Chris seems to have descended
virtually every sweet line on the Conness Ridge.
“So,” I said, pointing up at the mellower runs
on the Greenstone Ridge just above camp, “you’re only
going to want to ski these lines, right?”.
“Um,” said Matt, “I don’t even want to do those.”
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