|
... Continued
Part 3
– Sunday:
NE Couloir of North Peak
The
radio crackled around 7:30am. “Steeleman. This is Joesnow. We’re at the dam, coming in hot.”
About 30 minutes later, Joe and Gary were seen hiking
along the shore of Greenstone Lake. Chris had to
bail out at the last minute due to the unprecedented
revocation of his previously negotiated hall pass.
Although I was bummed
Chris couldn’t make it, Joe and Gary turned out to be
awesome ski partners for many reasons – not the least
of which were that: (i) Gary set the bootpack all the
way up the SE face of North Peak; and (ii) Joe would
later establish a new standard of coolness by not only
driving us and our gear down the newly-opened
Saddlebag road at the end of the day, but also by
providing us with a couple of coldies and bumping the
White Stripes on volume
eleven all the way down the roadway.
Gary
and Joe hedged against the Saddlebag Road closure by
bringing mountain bikes. They rode their bikes
up the closed road and then hiked in to meet us at
around 8:00 am. After exchanging the now-familiar pleasantries of
like-minded dudes who became acquainted in skiing chat
rooms on the internet, we saddled up our loads and
began hiking up the gradual east ridge of North Peak.
Gentle slopes quickly led to steeper slabs, which soon
yielded to car-sized talus blocks. Gary nearly lost a
pole down the bottomless chasm between two boulders
while Joe struggled admirably to keep his precarious
balance atop the talus in his rigid soled AT boots.
Because we're uncoordinated fat guys from the city, Matt and I
kept our
approach shoes on. We eventually left the huge talus
blocks behind, but only after enduring a few scraped knees and
several
Aron Ralston jokes.
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
BACK
