Sunday, March 10, 2013

Glacier National Park in March

On the way to Choteau last weekend, our friend Phil started excitedly describing a ski traverse he had done with our friend Brad.  He couldn't remember where it started, but he knew it was awesome.  By a stroke of luck, Brad was planning to take a couple of folks on this traverse yesterday and invited me and Dave to come along.  Brad emphasized that it would be a full day so we met at 5:30 a.m. and got started around 7:30 a.m.


It was nothing short of glorious.  We had sun, which makes itself scarce here during the winter, and mild temperatures.  The snow at lower elevations was hard crust, but for the most part we skied great snow and had a wonderful day totalling 7500 feet of climbing and 8000 feet of downhill.
Near the end I hit a wall and my quads were on fire.  I was so tired I felt like I could just puke or lay down and die.  I may have been challenged on a couple slightly more technical climbs... and had to crawl to avoid falling into a stream and duct tape my boots and require an embarassing level of help/instruction/guidance near the end getting out of the drainage... But it was totally worth it.  This is why I live here.  Such a great day.

1 comment:

Olga said...

This is glorious. You live in paradise.