Vindicated on Gobblers

Another minor adventure by Matt

Made a second attempt at Gobblers. This time I was accompanied by a work friend who had never been back country before.

It rained and rained and rained, by the time it finally started to snow I was soked through to the skin everywhere, including down my boot and into my feet.

I ended up alone with Soby on the ridgeline, my poor friend had such a hard time with the equipment, that I was freezing to death waiting for him so much, so I kind of had to ditch him or get hypothermia (seriously).

On my way up Soby was wondering around as she always does and out of the corner of my eye I saw her fall through a cornice. My first thought was "on no Soby!" and took 2 steps toward the edge of the cornice, when sombody in my brain said, stop you fool you'll fall too! Luckily there was a break in the cornice line a short way up and when I peeked on the other side, there was Soby, visibly shaken up but walking and ok. She fell around 20ft, I was just glad she didn't fall on any rock, cliffs or anything else. She had a hard time coming back to me though, it was still a very steep hill, she stoped halfway and looked at me as if 'help me'. I called to her and she made it back up.

The Cornice Soby fell through, notice the "V" notch
Poor Soby dog after she climbed out of her fall zone

After she got back I continued on up the ridge line. I reached a point just near the top and I started to really get worried about Bryan, he's an intermediate skier and and a very inexperienced (winter) back country traveler. Looking ahead I saw one last hill to climb to actually peak. I was here last year and skiied off the peak, so I really didn't need to repeat that again. Somthing was telling me though, 'you need to go find Bryan'. So I got my stuff together and made may back along the ridge. After a little while I found Bryan, he was trucking up the ridge doing his best to follow my tracks. When I skied up to him I said, "Boy am I glad to see you" he replied, "No I'm really glad to see you". He told me how he was a little nervious and that he was losing my tracks in the weather. I was ready to get off this mountain at this point and helped him get ready to go. I gave him a quick lesson in skiing safely in avalanche terrain and we praticed skiing one at a time, island of saftey to island of saftey, trying to maintain a visiual at all times. This was kind of hard though as the clouds would come in from time to time and completely envlope you as you skied.

We did make it down ok, Bryan had a hard time with the downhill though, he was very tired from the apporach which only hindered him in his decent. But I really have to hand it to him, dispite all of the struggles, he said he really enjoyed it and always gave it 110%

Here's a video, my old man could be proud of ;)
(Sorry for my friends shaky hand, I think he was pretty tired)