Visitors!

 I had visitors the last couple of days. Friends Rick and Reeve came out for a quick ski trip escaping wind hammered funk in the Eastern Sierra.

 Yesterday we went to the Schell Creek Range to attempt a line I've had my eyes on for a good while. I took this photo two weeks ago. We did the avalanche chute on the right.

Moody morning midway up.

Reeve took this one of me getting higher up in the chute.

On the ascent we weren't too sure how good the skiing was going to be. The snow was kind of wind packed, shallow powder. Turned out it skied great. Got a couple shots of Rick and Reeve got a nice video of me.
 

Those guys were so stoked they went up for a run in the adjacent chute. I elected to head back to the truck to nurse my back.

Today we did a little gambling. With a fantastic day in the bag, we ventured into some unknown terrain to try a line on Ward Mountain. We couldn't drive nearly as far as we had hoped due to deep snow, but skinning up the road was easy. Came across this "fountain" on the way up. Probably was an amazing ice sculpture earlier this winter.

Skinning shenanigans.

Ended up doing some mildly unpleasant bush/timber whacking once we left the road to attain this ridge.

With rapid warming and an apparently long way to our goal we decided to bail.

Actually had an enjoyable short descent on corn type snow before reaching the road again. Not epic fun like yesterday, but still mostly enjoyable. Nice to know the lay of the land back there. Will have to go back and give it another go someday.

Really happy to have visitors! I was feeling like a ski hermit out here.