Plan-B... Sometimes a change in plans is the best thing to do. The original plan was to mountain bike 3 days in Moab. This trip had been planned for months. With what looked like a setup of having a very strong late season 'perfect storm' hit the La Sals with decent snow, in a year with a snowpack at 160%, I did some quick research a few days prior to leaving. Hmmm... Think we need to ski the first day, Friday, April 12th, right after the storm, with sunshine and biking returning for Kathi's mountain bike clinic over the weekend.

Decent snow turned out to be a true 2-foot dump. Strong storm winds piled the snow 3' deep on leeward ridges. The avy danger jacked up, but 24 hours after the storm allowed the danger to rapidly decrease and gave the forest service time to plow the Geyser Pass winter trailhead access road. Normally a ski trip to the La Sals in mid-April would be in search of corn, as in 2000-foot awesome corn runs on the slopes of Haystack, Tuk, Mellenthin or Peale.

This being our first ever ski in the La Sals, I took the advice from the locals and we opted to lap the North Woods, easily accessed off the Laurel Highway. With light snow and poor visibility above treeline, it was the right thing to do. This might have been the best tree run I've ever done. A 1600' descent thru perfectly spaced trees. Kathi, Walter and I were stoked!

Photo: Google Earth gdraphic of the route. Other photos in the Facebook thread.

Barry

aka Ritchey-TeleRanger