Day 74, LCC to McDonald's to BCC

With uncertain weather and a relatively late start, Bart G, Casey, JD and I unloaded at White Pine in search of some adventure. The idea was to get to Maybird, but as we skinned up the path, we thought a detour was in order.

The detour:

This is JD with Casey in background on the scramble up the North Ridge of Lake Peak.

Somehow we managed to put in the skin track or booter almost the entire way, definitely making the vertical the hard earned variety.

Bart and JD peaking down into the East Couloir of Lake Peak:


After skiing the couloir down to White Pine Lake, Casey bid us adieu and we turned around to skin/boot back up. From there we skied down to Red Pine Lake and headed up to the ridge between White Baldy and the Pheifferhorn. Clouds had been swirling all morning and as we gained the ridge, we caught great views of Box Elder.


We skinned toward the Pheif, peaking down a couple couloirs into Maybird and eventually settled on the one just East of the last bump on the ridge before the Pheifferhorn proper. We kicked off all the cornices before Bart cut into the entrance and bounce tested the slope a few times. That was the beginning of about 4000 feet of great skiing all the way out the Maybird Apron with about zero visibility. Still super fun.

If the weather had been better...
Just after this pic, clouds completely engulfed the whole world and we didn't really want to ski by feel above the cliffs.

It was about 2:00 PM by this point and Bart needed to take off. That meant a trip to McDonald's and a reunion with Casey. All of a sudden we found ourselves at the base of Argenta. Along the summit ridge of Kessler, Casey, tired from 7,000 ft, wanted to rip skins and ski out. Jason told him, "I want to go to the top, just to make you have to keep going."

Casey not too pleased on the summit of Kessler


He pretty soon forgot his troubles as the top 2000 ft might have been the best of the year. About a 1000 feet from the car I had my own troubles with fogged glasses and frozen hands. I even contemplated peeing on my hands to warm them up. Didn't do it, but it was that bad. Made it home just in time for a delicious Jessie casserole special and left over Thai food.

Total Elevation for the day: 9000 feet