After Thursday’s big push in the powder, we woke exhausted on Friday morning. The big dinner and 8 hours of rest had helped, but the week was starting to catch up to us. The sun was shining though, and it looked to be a bright and beautiful day.

Fredd, Marta, and Tobin ready to rock.

At 8am, the temperature hovered around 5F, and brilliant crystals of powder shimmering and swishing past our skis as we glided down the cat road to another drainage entrance. With gorgeous weather, Evan planned to take the group up into the alpine of Shannon Lake drainage, the shining jewel of VMT’s terrain. After a long traverse and gradual climb through chilly shaded woods, we finally burst out into the sunshine on Shannon Lake.

Snack break in the sun on Shannon Lake.

The lake is spectacular, setting at the base of an enormous series of bowls and towering peaks. The high alpine above tempted us with runs to come, and we soaked it all in during a short break. After the snack, Evan laid down the gauntlet, challenging Charlie to set a perfectly straight skintrack across the lake. It’s a difficult task over the distance, with big benches up high to judge from. Read more…

Deep. That’s the best way to describe Thursday at Valhalla Mountain Touring.

“Thanksgiving” – as we came to call it – started the way all skiers dream, with huge soft flakes pouring from the sky, dulling the daylight coming through the windows. We’d been getting regular evening storms to refresh the snow overnight, a few inches here and there, but it had dumped the night before.  Evan confirmed how sweet the news was over breakfast – 20 inches of new snow, and the temperature hovering around 5F. Blower.

The storm still pounding hard, sign of a good day to come.

From the start, it was clear that it would be a big day. On the skintrack up, the snow quickly piled up on our shoulders as we climbed. It was a day to pack an extra jacket, more gloves, anything you needed to stay out longer. Evan’s dog Benny waded out in front on the skintrack, plowing through up to his chest. Each step of the skis whomphed a little cloud of light powder around you. Expectations were high, and the first run did not let us down.

Charlie blows by in a trail of cold smoke.

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By day four at Valhalla Mountain Touring, we were fully in the zone… enthusiastic, strong and happy. Evan dropped hints of a secret spot that we might get to, Johnny’s Magical Shroom Room, and our ears all perked up. Rumors of pillow fields spread quickly, and the whole crew was geared up for a fun day.

Looking over at the previous day's Three Doors and upcoming Shannon Lake drainages, shrouded in clouds.

We climbed through familiar terrain, but this time kept gaining the ridgeline to Ruby Peak. Spread out on the horizon through shrouded clouds, we caught glimpses of the runs from the day before, and the tantalizing alpine areas of the Shannon Lake drainage – VMT’s prized terrain. With a break in the clouds, we finally got our bearings on the surroundings, piecing together everywhere we’d skied so far, and making mental notes and tick lists of other terrain.

Chris, Evan, and Ross on the ridge for the second run.

The first run off Ruby could not have been smoother, quickly opening up ridgeline turns into sweeping powder arcs down the bowl. The turns kept coming, finally easing into an evergreen GS that dropped us down on a low logging road. From that point, Evan surveyed the group, and the proposal to explore and check out the Shroom Room met with a resounding yes. We worked our way around the basin, back up a new ridge, and dropped into another line of deep powder and scattered pillows. Read more…

Day 3 at Valhalla Mountain Touring dawned with blue skies and word of more broken weather and storms piling up later in the week. With the opportunity in the forecast, Evan decided to take our group out to explore the Caribou area, another drainage over from the lodge. We started out skiing down the cat road to the drainage’s access point, bitter cold wind whipping at our noses in the early morning.

Up a new drainage with blue skies and beautiful snow.

A long, gradual climb brought us up to the base of Three Doors, a chuted section of steeps broken by trees and pillow lines. The lines looked tempting above, but before getting ahead of ourselves, we stopped to assess the lurking danger from the high pressure that preceded the recent storms. Evan and tail guide Ross dug a pit while we observed, seeing a clean shear of the most recent snow on buried surface hoar.

Evan and Ross evaluate the snowpack in Three Doors.

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