Waking up bright and early on Saturday, four of us piled our skis and bodies into Vincent’s car and set off for the mountain! We got to the chain up area slightly ahead of schedule and waited for Josh to finally arrive. Opting to take our chances without chains and we sped up to the first bend. Vincent started chanting “speed… momentum…” while the rest of us were holding on for our lives. We were able to get our packs shuttled up to the trailhead before we put on our skins and began our ascent.
With some early sun on the path we quickly warmed up and were well on our way to Red Heather until our skins began to glop up and we slowly ground to a halt. Surprisingly, after brief water break and some strange hail-snow, our skins began working again and we made it to Red Heather for a delicious lunch.
We followed the ridge up and after following Josh and Vincent’s smelly path we finally arrived at the Elfin hut! Lukas and Emily started digging their snow cave while the rest of us setup our camp nearby. With our camps ready for the night we skinned to a nearby slope and ran through an explosive rescue scenario! After successfully retrieving the backpack our exhaustion caught up to us and we retreated back to the the warmth of the shelter for some dinner.
The next morning we woke up hoping for good conditions to ski Gargoyles but with poor visibility we opted to sleep in and run a couple more practice drills. We had a longer breakfast before heading out to rescue some more backpacks. Emily and I set off a bit earlier to setup a surprise scenario, which, after quickly completing we set off our final descent. We reached the car, tired but feeling much more confident with our rescue skills!