wrote:
I'm looking to go backpacking on skis this winter. Currently I have a
pair of Fischer Crown E99 skis, SNS-BC bindings and Salomon Escape 7.

I have issues with this setup because the skis seems so thin and I'm
wondering if a wider ski would be more stable on untracked snow while
carrying a large backpack. Also, the boots I have don't provide the
ankle support I'm used to while hiking, but some of those big clunker
plastic boots I've seen seem so heavy and cumbersome. Also, it's a
little hairy heading down steeps with this setup as well.

This is at least as heavy gear as the heaviest used by any of the dozen
skiers who skied Telemark-Lillehammer (300 km) over 8 days before the
'94 Olympics.

Personally I used my original (very long!) Fischer skate skis for this
trip, which entailed a _lot_ (90-95%) of trail-breaking.

I'd previously used the same setup for 10-15 years of skiing Telemark
from north to south, including a lot of ups and downs, most of it in the
partly forested parts of the hills and mountains.

I've just made a Google Earth file showing the approximate track we
followed on one of those trips:

http://tmsw.no/Matthislopp.kmz

The three waypoints are in the locations we stayed overnight.


My goal is to head up to Tuolumne Meadows and head to the ski hut
where I've stashed food for the winter. It's a good 20 mile trek to
get there, probably up Tioga Pass Road (12 miles 2,500' ascent) then 8
miles over rolling terrain.

Sounds like a great trip!

Are you going to be all alone, or will you have a (small) group of
people to share the work of breaking trail?

Any ideas or tips would be fantastic. Thanks!

Good luck!

Terje


--
- Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"