The Beautiful Stuggle

It's a beautiful thing that's happenin' right now

Right now G

Yo, I'm rockin' with my man Hi-Tek on the track right now

We fightin' the good fight

The Beautiful Struggle

Yeah, let's go...

(Outro to "Beautiful Struggle" by Talib Kweli)

Today was another weird day where I felt like I was fighting with myself.  By that, I mean I feel that my decisions kept leading to difficult situations.  Some days we float up hill, ski like pros (at least in our minds), and don't find any significant challenge.  Today, there was a bit of a struggle.  But even when getting stabbed in the face by scrub oak, I find joy in it..although maybe not as much as Jason and the guys, who are skiing stunning Teton Couloirs every day.  I'm not jealous.

The plan was to ski Superior a couple times, and then bounce around upper LCC enjoying the powder and putting in some solid work toward my vertical goal for the week.  On the summit of Superior, Monte Cristo looked really enticing so we wandered over to take a look.

Looked good but Josh spotted a fresh slide with no tracks exiting.  Figured we should make sure everyone was OK.  

Turns out, two guys were hiking out of Mineral when they sympathetically released a slab above them that caught them both.  One deployed his airbag (pictured) and neither was buried nor injured.  Sufficiently spooked, we decided to avoid steep north through east faces.  

Then clicking into his bindings, Josh somehow managed to destroy his ski.  No more back seat wiggles for him!

South facing was stable and deep

Exiting the Monte Cristo gully was pretty heinous.  It ended up taking just as long to get down as it did up.  

One more cause looking at destroyed gear is fun

After all this, I decided to cut my loses and drove Josh back down the canyon.  Tomorrow, the struggle continues!