Extreme Fun for Turns All Year: Month 81

Get into the car wearing nothing but a tank top, shorts, ski boots, and tutu (duh). Go on a five minute ride. Walk 30 seconds, on snow, to the top of a flat landing and click into your skis. Sloosh your way down for 750ish vertical feet on perfect, skier-groomed corn. Carry skis back to car. Rinse. Repeat.

Thus Turns All Year Month 81 was complete! Generally skiing in July requires quite a bit more work (evidence here, here, and here), but this year Ben, Theresa, and I decided to push the easy button. As ya'll now know, I was busy planning my secret wedding and knew I had only one day in the month where I could ski. Theresa suggested a change of pace from our usual July Muir slog, and we were game for an adventure! Mt. Baker - here we come!

July 8, 2018 - Artist Point at Mt. Baker
We arrived and spent 45-minutes in the parking lot trying to figure out where, exactly, we should go. Eventually following a group of gals up a boot pack to a high point, we quickly realized we had no idea where we were going. Frustrating exploring brought us to the top of a steep chute that looked like it would go, but no one was sure. Brave Theresa raised her hand to go first!

You wouldn't know by her amazing style, but T still has no idea if this will go through or not yet.

Lucky for us, the chute had continuous snow, and only required one spicy snow-bridge crossing. Go fast so you don't fall in!

Snowbridge up and to the right. Photo by T.

Shredding the dirty snow.

Ben on a second lap, with our first object behind him, center.

Traversing down to the car, we realized we had a much easier option where everyone else was skiing, and set our sights on that. Back at the parking lot, Ben hitched a ride to get our car, brought it back down, and brought us all up. We did a few different creative shuttles like this during the day for a total of five laps and exactly 3,000ft of vert. I even reached a blistering 34.4 mph on one of those laps. Oh baby. Oh baby.

While we skied, the sun put on a dazzling show with a full "sun dog" rainbow ring. Ben also put on a show, skiing in shorts and donning a green tutu so he could fit in with the crowd.

The easy run. By the end of the day it was covered in moguls!

Sundawg. Photo by T.

#TeamTutu!

We made friends hitching as well, and did three laps with Travis from Canada. After our 5th easy lap we were tired, so we grabbed beers and lawn chairs, and joined the crowd for local pond-skim entertainment. By 2pm in the afternoon, the snow was warm, sticky, and slow. It made for spectacular crashes into the frozen lake that would literally take your breath away.

The jump collapsed at take off....

....and ended in an icy backflop!

All in all a GREAT day for Team Tutu! Dare I say the best July skiing I've ever experienced. I think we'll put this back on repeat next year!

Obligatory photo with Mt. Shuksan. Until next time my dear!