The South Bowl

Nora's picture of Stuey and I

Lately the weather has been cold at night and sunny by day.  This means that in the mountains the snow freezes up at night and only the south facing slopes corn up during the day.  And the steeper the south facing slope - the more sun it catches, the more it thaws, and the better the skiing.

In terms of skiing this means you try and pick a line that sticks to the south facing slopes.  You also try and ski as late in the day as possible to give things a chance to thaw out and corn up.

Near the end of last week I was skinning up a semi frozen sheet of ice with Nora, Stuey and their friends when I opined to another kid's parent, 'if I was up here without kids I'd do the south bowl'.  My reasoning was that it faces directly south and is very steep.  But I also figured that it would be too steep for the kids, and the biggest problem is that if you ski down into the south bowl you have to hike back up and out to ski down to the car.  I figured it would not be kid friendly.

But the other parent replied, 'we should do it'.  And all the kids thought it a great idea too.  And so we did the South Bowl.  It was an immediate and huge hit.  We went back and did it the next day too.  Of course we did have to climb back up and out of the south bowl and this was not met with universal acclaim.
Patrick