randosaigai.com
Kendall Ridge, March 2, 2008
Daniel Massicotte represents for the Quebecoise - funny how all the best action pictures were of the splitboarder!
I'd been meaning to get out with my friend Fabien for some weeks, and Sunday seemed like the right time - a bit of fresh snow, a rapidly improving weather forcast, and both of us with the day off! I called Kevin and Fabien called his French-Canadian friend Daniel, and we met up at Summit West late in the morning.
The high clouds were just beginning to break up as we headed out under the I-90 overpass around 10:30 AM, and we had the lunettes de soleil at the ready. As expected, it was the snowshoe bobsled track from the PCH trailhead, but that soon turned to a nice skintrack as we ascended the forest. Whoever set it meandered a bit, but generally kept a nice grade going.
The weather grew warm as we neared the top, and all of us stripped to first layer shirts. Pinwheels began rolling off the steeper slopes under the cliffs and we were worried about our timing, thinking that the snow would either all roll off the mountain or become oatmeal before we got to the ridge. Fortunately intermittant cloud breaks kept the sun from ruining all the fun, and we enjoyed a set of nice views off the north side of Kendall Ridge before getting ready to descend.
The down was much better than we had expected when we set out in the morning - 12 or so inches of fresh interspersed with stretches of rain crust made a few of the turns interesting, but lower in the bowl the mountain yielded excellent sliding in heavy fresh snow. Daniel made up for the slow splitboard transitions by ripping some of the best looking turns of the day!
