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TR: Castle Peak, California USA
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Castle Peak north of I-80 in California, April 19th, 2005 The annual last minute tax frenzy and two sick kids over the weekend had convinced me that taking a day off work and just putzing around in the mountains was what I needed on Tuesday. I also had a new pair of skis to try out, 165cm Fischer T-Stix Stingrays' w/dynafit bindings. Unlike my usual weekend jaunts I got a very late start and did not pull into the snow park area off I-80 until shortly after 9am. Normally in April, this would mean at most 2-3 hrs of skiing before the slush becomes unbearable. However, when I stepped out of the car it felt more like mid-january than mid-April. 25 degrees F with a strong wind and snow spitting from the overcast. It appeared that there had been a freak local storm overnight and there was 4-5 inches of fresh powder being blown around. Encouraged by this lucky freak of the weather, I headed off to the top of Andesite Peak[1] to get some windblown powder turns in before the clouds broke up and the sun came out. The wind was blowing quite hard all the way up and any open spot was scoured down to bare crust. I got to the top of Andesite and looked for downwind trees. There was a pretty cohesive wind slab that was poorly bonded to the underlying crust on the peak, so I looked for lower angles and wind shadows. In the trees, the powder was up to a foot deep in spots. Very nice for the middle of April.. After a couple runs, the sun started coming out and I decided to head over to the west facing trees on Castle Peak. On the way I checked out the Peter Grubb hut and there is still at least 8 feet of snow on the ground there. I got two more runs in and decided to call it a day. My first experience with using Dynafit's was mostly pleasant although they do take more futzing about switching modes than other AT bindings. The relatively weightless feeling on the climbs is well worth it. I even managed a few hundred yards of skating on them. Skating works quite well with these bindings and the relatively soft TLT4 boot if you remember to lock the toe in tour mode first[2]. Descending on the Fischer's was really quite good once I remembered to stick with soft boot techniques. I think that's about as wide a ski as I could drive easily with the TLT4 and you could definitely get more out of them with a beefier boot. _ Booker C. Bense [1]- http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=...lon=-120.36556 [2]- You'll learn quickly after the first couple face plants. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBQmamD2TWTAjn5N/lAQEhiQQArOYzLEcOEhVqHmCezc4yiR5koqth3UMV LjY57vWrYaKS/AaeNdPHTx11q64JCDslmuL+L1px3bfg5+ApY0S1aOfxyBjtlHc e HWTqmA/s5N4IHMrR63p57j/YJpqelUinWz5gMyhnpD5iZHgkAQ82qYRc5dKFNphD z3bIemhCV6Q= =2Tig -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- |
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