Skunked

I look at today’s outing as having been a test. A test of whether I’d truly learned to implement the ideas learned very recently about pulling the plug in the face of uncooperative weather. Bad conditions, coupled with personal desire, can lead to some discomfort. But when the weather skunks you, the weather skunks you. It’s good to go home and get cleaned up.

Another early morning, another PROBAR breakfast as I drive to the trailhead. The 10 minutes not spent making and eating breakfast at home leads to more sleep! Wonder if anyone will spot what's wrong with this picture?

It appears both I and the day’s partners passed, because we simply stood beneath the impenetrable cloud layer calmly discussing the fact that since we couldn’t see the higher reaches, it would be somewhat silly to trudge into them. Despite being fully laden for ski mountaineering ‘war,’ we stood in place for twenty minutes or so to see if conditions would change. Nope, if anything, the cloud layer dropped during that time.

I thought I’d read ‘partly cloudy’ as the forecast, if not ‘mostly sunny,’ so there was internal debate about whether or not to stick around and see if the clouds would simply burn off. This trick has worked on occasion. But, the more we stood there, the more it seemed likely that pushing it would be futile.

Walking away from the clouds..

So, we turned around and headed down, which was really quick work since the cloud cover had kept everything frozen. That makes it 0 for 3 (as far as skiing anything interesting) for me on recent outings. But, points are always awarded for coming home in one piece. And, better yet, we’ll be back at it again tomorrow…

Why push it? There's always tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that..