Contrary to appearances, there was just a few inches of powder on a firm crust, what we call ‘dust on crust’ or in this instance deep dust on crust, and we had to feel our way up the mountain with our skin track, tracing a slightly deeper swath in the gut of the slope, tacking till the bit of new was diminished to where we could no longer get purchase on the crust below, then switching back to stay in the groove. We went as high as we could this way, but ran out of goodness a hundred feet below the summit, much to my partner’s chagrin. He was clever enough to just ski down our track where we had already determined the most new snow lay. Myself not so much.
