Glacier Mountaineering Society

Sat, Jan 18 2014 - Ski Touring (View Original Event Details)

Coordinator(s):		Joe Grabowski
Participants:		Joe Grabowski, Frank Wesolovski, Brian Kennedy, Denise Grabowski, James Hulvat

Write Up:
The weather pattern of the previous week made the hunt for untracked powder challenging. A warm and wet storm with high winds followed by a high pressure system that brought the sun out ensured a combination of breakable rain crust, breakable sun crust, boilerplate, wind press and some powder. We had success finding all of these conditions including some softened sun affected snow high up on south facing slopes. Fortunately we designed our ski tour into Paola Creek to minimize the lesser desirable snow conditions and had decent powder skiing. This valley in the Flathead Range sees very little skier traffic due to difficult access and a long approach. These attributes keep the riff raff out as I like to say. I was pleased to share one of my favorite backcountry ski runs at the end of the day with Frank Wesolovski, Brian Kennedy, James Hulvat and Denise Grabowski. It’s a 2,100’ run from Paola ridge down to the old road in the creek bottom. Only the final 400’ was boilerplate. At least it was manageable. It sure was nice taking breaks in the sun on the top of the ridge. A rugged day in the Middle Fork.

Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Tim Anderson at twamontana@gmail.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.