Yeah, pretty much showing my age with this reference. Anyway, Brittany and I headed out from the Slate river Trailhead with a few different options in mind and ended up at the base of the S-Tube. This is exactly why snowmobiles are cool:
What could possibly be better than sitting on a snowmobile sitting there looking at all these lines:
Oh yeah, skiing it would be better than just looking at it, so that’s what we set off to do. Reaching the S-tube (the most prominent line in the photo above) is always an interesting skin track until you hit the ridge, and after that it’s nothing but gawking at all the other possibilities. Might hit the peak behind Brittany tomorrow…
We reached the top of the S-Tube and it looked like some slides this season had made it a bit thinner than normal, so the first move was a bit more “interesting” than normal.
We had a good sized slough run through the tube as we got positioned, which was a good indicator of conditions for us. I dropped in first and it was as good as it looked- really deep snow with a little blower on top of more supportable powder below. It doesn’t get any better. I stopped a couple of times to make sure another slough wasn’t about to catch me, but as it turned out I should have just charged the whole thing. Better to be cautious, I guess. Did I mention the S-Tube is one of my favorite lines anywhere? It’s just so amazingly flowy. Pics:
Sadly, my camera batteries died and I wasn’t able to get any more photos of Brittany. But here’s our tracks:
And a look at our skin track. A couple of guys saw our tracks and decided to follow it and ski some of the adjoining lines. Excited to go back up this track tomorrow and get more of the same. Like, fer sher!
[...] our ski descent of the S-Tube the day before, Brittany and I admired the NE face of Hancock and made plans to ski it the [...]
hello, i love looking at your website, when i can’t think of where i want to go sometimes, i look at your site to get some ideas. i was wondering how to get to the s-tube, that looks like a really nice spot.
Hey Jeremy, thanks for checking in. Sometimes we’re vague on purpose. The exploration is often as rewarding as the skiing. So with that in mind, explore the Slate River valley- you’ll find some great skiing and possibly even the S-tube.