A milestone, of sorts

On April 4th, I took a long lunch hoping to see Smoothie open.  It wasn't, but Granite Peak looked pretty inviting.  The hike was a bit more strenuous than expected.  Not because it's surprising.. it looks about as strenuous as it is.  But, as I was slogging my way up through the sun-warmed slush, I started feeling a bit nauseous.  Usually, that's a good cue that I'm above max heartrate for too long and it's time to back off, but a short rest to get my heartrate down didn't do much to help.  Oh, right.  Foggy head, nausea, achy body.  Probably the flu.  Oh well, I was halfway up, and there's something about making it halfway that tends to get you through the rest of the climb so as to not waste the first half of the effort.

The views alone were completely worth it.

There was this incredible, enormous hanging cornice along the ridge to the west, out of bounds.  I think that's looking towards Needle Peak.

We rested at the peak for a while, taking in the views, and contemplating the route down.  I've never been up before, so all possible routes were new.  I was settling on an entrance just at the peak into Direct Chute, via skier's right.  The entrance looked a bit tricky, based on a turn on a little ridge precisely placed to avoid the crevasse forming where the cornice was pulling away, but not too wide and cause a fall of the ridge into the next chute over to the right.

In the photo above, you can prominently see the little ridge which borders the right of the line.  After the initial turn in, it looked like a great, steep, fairly wide chute.  And as I was mentally preparing myself for the first turn, Jan says "I'm a little terrified of you doing that".  Hm.  That's never happened before.  Never.  I'm the scaredy-cat, bailing out of lines well within my ability level.

But, that was enough to give me pause, especially without my helmet.  While the chute was lovely after the first turn, there's still a big rock outcropping in the middle of the runout.   We headed over a little to the right, which was still nice and steep, and lovely slushy snow.

 But, someday, I'll be going back for Direct Chute.