LEFT TO RIGHT Sam Thackeray riding a couloir called Murphy’s Law. Photo: Jess A. Sam Thackeray and Brian Peters arriving at an aban-doned fire lookout in Idaho’s Frank Church wilderness. Photo: Jess A. All smiles despite heavy packs and heavy legs. Left to right: Sam Thackeray, Brian Peters and Jess A. at Bush Creek. Photo: Brian Peters confronted with further complications: The flight company that is resupplying us won’t be able to land at our planned airstrip due to poor conditions. OK, Plan B: We’ll go farther south to a differ-ent strip and spend more time walking on dirt. Fully committed. We pull up to the D3+ avalanche debris pile to two machine operators slowly working on clearing the blockage. With a lot of grunting and moaning we shoulder our 65-plus-pound packs and, one foot in front of the other, head east. Almost immediately the weight of our isolation sinks in. We are at least a day’s walk from the nearest thing representing civilization. The stakes out here are high. A small mistake could be catastrophic and no one is coming to get us. It’s going to take everything we have learned from our decades of experience to pull off this mission. Our ability to adjust our plans based on what the mountains give us plays a major role in our success. The second morning provides us the opportunity to make an unplanned adjustment to climb and ride a couloir that would prove to be one of the most aesthetic lines of the trip on undoubtedly the best snow. We take full advantage and set the tone—ride for the morning, then move camp. We stick to this routine as much as possible, but the terrain doesn’t always sync its rhythm with ours. We run into days of slogging. Sixty-mile-per-hour winds leave trees scattered like toothpicks across the mountains. We come across regenerating lodgepole pines so thick that riding through them is concern-ingly difficult. Terrain so steep and snow so icy that skinning becomes impossible. The snow is also not strong enough to sup-port our weight while bootpacking, leaving us sinking to our waists with each step. Logs and sharp granite create obstacles that threaten to destroy both our equipment and ACLs. These are ego-shattering conditions, especially while riding with heavy packs. Creek crossings and dense brush tear at our clothing and slow our pace to a crawl. THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL 033
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 21.3: Page 33
