I was solo again today but an old friend decided to join me. He didn't make his appearance until after I decided to head north from the parking lot. It's about 400 feet up to gain a view into the bowl and with my lack of corrected vision, I thought it looked pretty good. Part way up the climb along the ridge to the top of Cornice Ridge, my old friend made his appearance. I'd guesstimate he was 80 gusting 100 but he blew in from the north east. It seems he must have been lurking over night as well because the slopes that previously looked pretty good now were showing obvious signs of wind affect. I debated turning around and heading to the trees on the other side of the road, but mostly blue skies and a desire to see what was off the north side of Buzz's ridge kept my face buried behind a toque, collar, hood and goggles.

I'd previously only spent two days north of the parking lot and didn't have very good visibility the day I went to Buzz's ridge. There's definitely some terrain available, but with the reverse loading (and scouring) it looked to be best left for another day. I tour without corrective glasses and have a contact lens phobia so my evaluation of distant slopes is suspect at best. When in doubt, I generally assume the worst. Maybe they were fine, but I thought the bowl between Cornice and Buzz was good too.

I kept wrapping around the ridge until I got over top of some trees. They snow would be better due to the shelter, but the aspect was now pretty much pure south and my other old friend - that big yellow ball in the sky - was doing his stuff. The turns were good but getting heavy. At the bottom I considered another lap - the only way up I knew was around the ridge and back to wind hell. The slope I'd just descended was quite steep and breaking switchback hell for average turns wasn't that appealing.

I made the walk out and up to the ridge above the lake, got some below average turns back to the vehicle and looked at my watch. It was past noon - leaving about 4 hours of daylight. With the lack of snow lately, it'd be a bit of a walk to find something fresh - the return on investment for walk in/out vs laps didn't appeal to me, so I drove down to the Creston side parking lot. I'd heard that some people tour by where the power lines cross the road - it turned out to be the same spot where I sat and waited for a tow truck when my transmission blew up a few years ago.

This parking lot is about a thousand feet lower than the top of the pass, which due to the precarious state of winter this year meant that you'd need to climb quite a bit before getting into good snow, but with this aspect being south facing, you might run out of mountain before finding the goods. It's a place I will return to when the snow is good down low - with about 2,000 feet of relief, it looks to be some of the longer vertical available here.

I decided to go for a drive and see what the local touring book had talked about for touring around Red Mountain. On the way through Trail, I nearly cried when I saw the famous covered staircase that Blair and I had ridden a few years ago. It was crusty when we hit it, but in the snowboard movies that made it famous, they had blower powder. Today is was dry. I bookmarked the gps locations of the touring parking spots by Red and will investigate options on the maps. For what it's worth, there weren't many locals touring, which might tell me all I need to know.

An abbreviated day and an embarrassing 2,170 feet .