Adam came out for his second day of the season and we awoke to a few inches of new snow in town, with maybe a bit more at the upper parking lot. It continued to snow as we cross country snowboarded to the far end of the lake, but by the time we were half way up Grizzly Pass the snow had stopped and the blue skies looked like they were on their way in.

We headed up the south side of pass towards the smaller of the two chutes I'd seen on the ridge. The plan was to take a look and bag it if it looked good and if not, just enjoy a longer powder run down to the meadows. With only a bit of exploring, I found the entrance, but from the angles I could see it almost looked like there was a small mandatory at the bottom. I didn't have the image on the camera anymore, but from memory, I was pretty positive it went and that there was only two chutes on the ridge. By process of elimination this had to be the one, right? None of this gave Adam a whole bunch of confidence when I offered to let him have first tracks. I'd also given him the Venture to try today - nothing like making your first turns of the day on a new (rockered) board on only your second day of the season into the unknown. He made a couple of timid turns into the chute until his line of sight permitted him to confirm there was no mandatory, then stepped on the gas pedal and charged the rest of it and the slope beneath. I was right behind him and felt a bit timid myself being back on a cambered board. A few turns and it felt like home being back on the Khyber though. Adam named this one Indecision Chute for fairly obvious reasons.

From the bottom of the meadows, we opted to recycle my up to the Herbst thanks to the mostly blue skies. With snow in the forecast for today, we were stoked to be able to get up high and enjoy the views. Near the top of the ramp, we opted to boot pack rather than put in switchbacks and we gained the ridge in no time. From there we continued to skin up with plans on getting up above at least one of the cliff bands. The weather had other plans and with the ceiling dropping, we were turned back at about the same height as I'd made it to solo. I headed for the other exit that dumps directly into the meadows this time. It has a bit of a tight choke with blue ice on the one side which concerned me a bit, but once above it and looking down, I was a lot more confident. Even if there was ice beneath the choke, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal. In the end there was no ice and soft turns were enjoyed down to the meadow. I named this exit the Herbst Hallway and after talking a bit we decided to go back the for the only remaining chute on this ridge.

I put in the up to gain Grizzly Pass then tied into the first up of the day. A few switchbacks higher brought us to Big Decision. We'd named it before we even started to climb - it seemed to fit given the Indecision name for the smaller one. It's a bigger chute with larger consequences on a poor stability day (which today wasn't). It looked to be a straight shot when viewed from the bottom, with just one piece of rock to maneuver around. As it turns out, Big Decision was a very apt name when viewed from the top. That one piece of rock turned out to be a very pointy mandatory and the path beside it was very tight and in very close proximity to a cliff band that was littered with icicles. The big decision in this case was will this snow hold? Can I get a turn in before the choke? And what's around the corner? In the end, there were too many questions so the Big Decision was to leave it for another day when there's either more snow or we have a rope. Plan B involved descending what we'd just climbed and then dumping into the trees which we'd skinned up through to gain the pass. This resulted in probably the best snow of the day.

Once again down in the meadows, I opted to recycle the up to East Knob from a few days ago. We soon crossed the border and headed for the bowling alley. We found an untracked lane with great powder all the way down to the lake. Once down and skinning back across the lake, we saw evidence of quite a few groups making laps off the knob today. Talking to the Moose tonight, he'd counted about 15 people including his own group today. That might make it one of the busiest days I've seen n my park, although today I spent most of my time in that other park south of the border.

Total up today was 5,510 feet, probable first descents were 2, and number of people seen where we were riding was 0. Today put me over 200,000 feet for the season. It was my 42nd of the year and I rode 22 of 31 days in January.