We started climbing up the cleared area for the pipeline. It was pretty warm, and it wasn’t very enjoyable. It went by pretty quick, and then we cut off onto the ridge of Zoa where there was more forest. It had pretty good views.
Very Sunny and Warm
View of the other side of highway 5
On the dip from the subsummit to the summit, my dad and I went down on our skins. It was very easy to get to the summit. We continued past Zoa to the ridge that connects to Zopkios. That was the best skiing we got all day.
Soft Skiing
To get to the place where we wanted to descend, the shoulder of Zopkios, we had to skin up. The snow was pretty wet and dense, so the skinning was tiring. Just before the descent point, there was a patch of rocks we had to walk down. We thought that section would be a lot harder because it’s marked as “narrow ridge” on the Baldwin map, seeing as when we went down Sentors near Bombtram we got cliffed out without warning on the Baldwin map.
Sticky Skinning
Rocky Bridge
Ice
The descent to Falls Lake was bad because it was crusty, and it was very hard to turn. It made my legs sore, and my ankle didn’t feel good. We weren’t able to get down all the way to Falls Lake. We had to skin up until we got to a trail that went down into Falls Lake. Going across Falls Lake wasn’t good because it was practically ice. From the lake we saw where we got cliffed out when we did Thar. The rest of the descent down the wide path was pretty quick and easy.
Nice TR, Devlin! I’ve only been to Zopkios in summer but it sounds like you were smart to go in winter. When we hiked it, we were a meter above the ground on stunted alpine trees and it was very slow. Saw some pretty mountain goats though.