Agenda: Skiing Mountain Ashland, Brown Mountain, and Mount Baily
Gear Used: Black Diamond MegaWatt's, Subaru Outback, cheap ass compass, PBR, Tracker beacon's, Mammut Nirvana pack, Fritchi Explorer bindings, and a Timex watch.
Special Note: Check out the route: RideWithGPS
Let's start this adventure with a quick announcement. Lava fields and compasses don't like each other!
My fellow coworker, roommate, and buddy Frank and I where suppose to raft the Illinois river this weekend with Will. Will, currently, is the man! However, due to flow's, weather, living situation, and the fact that Will lives in Portland the trip got canceled at the last minute.
Frank and I where not about to let a weekend off go wasted!
Friday night we went skiing and plotted our weekend of skiing. It was a great intro and warm up. Plus! I got to ski my new ski's for the first time. :) Night skiing on Mount A is by far one of my most favorite activities. While shredding the epic Mt A we decided to hit the Backcountry for the weekend and go check out Brown Mountain and Mount Baily. Both spots are suppose to be some of the best Backcountry skiing in the region and since we are both new to the Backcountry society we figured it was time to check them out.
We couldn't get an early start Saturday because my cliche, aka Subaru Outback, was dead and we had to drop it off so my battery could get charged. But that's a whole other story. We left Ashland around 9:30am and we headed out hwy 140 to Brown Mountain. Brown is suppose to be the easier of the two spots. After driving for a while we got to the general vicinity and could see Brown off to the south. The only beta we had was that there was a pullout on the north side of the road and that from there it was supper straight forward. That's bull shit! There are a lot of different pullout's on both sides of the road and it's not that straight forward.
After driving the same stretch of the hwy three times we finally found a pullout that we decided would work. Geared up, crossed the road, and started the ascent. Ascent is an epic word. The climb was fairly straight forward, and there were a lot of tracks. If anyone say's that Brown Mountain is quiet and a peaceful place to ski then they are full of shit and you shouldn't believe a word he/she ever say's again. It's a snowmobiler's paradise. It was very entertaining watching the snowmachiners rip around the mountain. Their tracks fucked up the untouched powder fields but whatever, seeing a snowmobile roll over the rider and down the hill was worth it.
As we neared the summit a storm started to roll in, so we decide to forgo the last pitch and start skiing. The skiing was interesting. Typical Cascade concrete! Heavy snow that was rutted out by snowmo tracks. We did find some pitch's and meadow's of nice light fluffy snow, but for the most part the snow was pretty cruddy and kicked our ass's.
And then we got lost.
Both Frank and I thought that we had skied down to the right, east, of our skin up and therefore when we got down into the tree line we started skiing west to get back to our tracks and car. However, we later figured out that we had in fact skied to the left of our tracks, which was why none of the terrain looked familiar. I think this was the point where I said, "man, it's no wonder people get lost in the woods!" We knew the general direction of where we wanted to go, North. But, the lava fields kept throwing off the compass bearings. We would head North and then check the compass and it would say were were heading South, East, West, or any direction other then North. After doing a couple complete circles we started to get frustrated and annoyed, but we stayed calm! We set the watch timer for 10 minutes and we started heading "North." At the end of the 10 minutes we would reevaluate our location and situation and determine if we wanted to proceed or change course. This method worked really well. After 30 minutes we connected with the PCT and within the next 10 Minutes we had reached hwy 140. We were only about five miles west of the car, but we weren't skiing circles in the lava fields anymore.
After 4.5 hours of touring, and 30 minutes of skiing were both very glade to get back to the car and the beer. We powered up with PBR's and Backpackers Pantry's chili and then motored into Klamath Falls for the night. Both exhausted, we bailed on the Baily portion of our trip and decided to ski Mount A again on Sunday. But we didn't and we completely wimped out.
Is 2/3 completion a passing grade?
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