With an afternoon trailhead departure time, Travis and I headed to some north facing options to avoid solar heat inspired headlines, and ended up banging around on Red Baldy. Plenty of other tracks there (15-20?), but plenty of untouched as well. Curious about the stability of the icy sandwich beneath the feet, a pit was dug. Dang, that’s some sandwich down there, still. Three, maybe four, separate, distinct ice layers in 2.5 feet of depth, with 6-10 inches rounding out the top. Reasonably stable, though. It’s a slice of good news, I’ll take it.
Snowpits aside, we got in some good conditions despite the heat, and managed two quick laps before Travis’ must-attend-to-girlfriend meter started sounding. Fortunately we had a decent exit as it was cooling by the time we headed down. Gliding over the ice is better than bogging in the soup anytime..
Anyway, a couple of sunny pictures from a tour to a place I haven’t visited once this year.

At this point, I began to hear about T's toe pain. As explained to me, he had to work hard to keep his toes from hurting during turns, which (apparently) caused him to feel fatigued and breathe hard. I labeled this as 'toe fatigue,' a concept new to me.

Travis: 'Can I just get these Aliens off my feet? That would be heaven.' (Run that line by an alien abduction conspiracy theorist.)




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