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I met up with Adam today and we opted to head to an area neither of us had been to before. The Crags is east of Baldy Rocks and looks intimidating from the highway. There are likely some lines in there, but we opted to ride the backside of what you see in the link.

The tour starts by following the standard climb up Baldy Rocks - I was amazed again at how much smaller it felt today - I must be getting stronger as we were nearing the summit in no time flat. We stopped just shy of the true summit and started the traverse to the east. Getting to the Crags involves some up and down - there are two high points along the way which are only 200 feet or so up from the low points. This meant some split ski descents, which obviously meant some spectacular crashes. Along the way we found a couple of chutes which I bookmarked in the gps for later.

The summit of Crags was fairly wind affected, but lower down we found some great turns in the bowl that drops away from the road. We put in the up for the second lap along the other ridge - the snow was softer on this side and it made for easier climbing compared to the more pressed ridge. After the second lap, we put in a another new up that skirted the one high point to gain the saddle. From there we climbed up to the first high point to the east of Baldy Rocks where the chute was. By now the visibility we had earlier in the day had disappeared. Still enough to bag it but it would have been more fun with the views we had earlier in the day. It was a nice rock walled entrance that flared out after it turned to the left. Short but sweet.

One final climb up from the bottom of the bowl gained us the ridge over looking the department of highways sheds. We were soon on the summit of Baldy Rocks and tried to find some fresh lines. This is probably the most highly trafficked spot at the pass, so completely fresh didn't happen, but we did find some pockets in the trees. A solid day with some new views. Total up was 5,160 which I learned was Adam's second 5,000+ (his first was a couple of days ago)

There was too much visibility when I took the picture of the chute, so we opted to wait until the clouds rolled in. Adam was first down and we could barely see the trees at the kink. This one isn't far from the chute we took. If we'd had have visibility I would have given it consideration. Classic split ski tracks - dragging poles to scrub speed! View from the summit of Crags with the two high points before the summit of Baldy Rocks. For one climb, Adam and I traded skis to compare the rocker vs. camber for uphill traction. The surprising result was that we couldn't notice a difference?
 

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