Booked it down to the lower eastside to nab a line I’ve been thinking about since 2022. For some reason or another, it’s never materialized in recent years for many in our group so we were very happy to get it while it was pretty good.

Around 3 miles of walking and 1 mile of skinning to Esmeralda Trailhead proper

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Skiing down Longs Pass

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Crossing Ingalls Creek. This is pretty much on the marked summer trail.

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Sherpa Balanced Rock

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The Big R

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Chris skiing the top bit

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Funneling into the backlit rock walls

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The full line starts from the summit, then arcs skier’s right toward the looker. Then we took a variation that countours a ridge bump on skier’s left then takes the obvious snow gully to the bottom.

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Some nice corn out of Longs Pass

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How every good spring ski ends

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Notes

• This was probably ~18 miles and ~9000 feet of vertical gain in around 11 ½ hours.
• Kyle’s trip report