Scott and I had plans to ski the NE face of Buck Mountain on Saturday, but were turned away at the after summitting and skiing over to the entrance to the NE face that we had seen a week earlier from Mt Maude. The entrance had much more rock than shown in photo, and choked in the middle so our orginal plan of skiing in from the top and then rappeling down where it chocked no longer seemed to go, so we opted to ski the east face and enjoy some carefree wind consolidated pow.
Morning started out eventfull with a call from Scott shortly before we were to meet at 12:30am that he had left his skins at home and would be about 15 minutes late. Soon to realize he must have left them last week on the road into Trinity and did not have them. I headed home quickly to grab a pair of skis and skins for Scott to use (188 R0ssignol S7's with Dukes), little heavy for the day planned but better than nothing... Making good time with fast driving we were on the sled at 3:30am.
After locating the lower road on Trinity in the dark and crossind some creeks we climbed our way up Alpine creek and our route went good as we were in the basin below the east face by 6am.
- Alpine Basin
The basin offered some great views as we climbed.
We reached the ridge and began to make our way across the west face towards the summit.
- Scott enjoying some easy traveling
- Clark in the background
After reaching the summit we skied down the the entrance of the NE face to have a look.
- Looking down NE face and denied at the entrance
We skied down part of the west face and made our way back to the ridge to enjoy some pow on the east face.
- Turns on west face
Day was good exploring some new terrain and we were enjoying beers at Trinity by 4pm.
