It was Friday afternoon and the van was loaded and ready to go. Anastasia and I were waiting for Jeffrey when I discovered the drip-drip of coolant making a small puddle under the motor. Fuck. Here's Jeffrey. Could we all pile in his tiny pickup truck? Not likely -- we have lots of gear and he's 8 feet tall.
Not to be deterred, Jeffrey dove into the back of his truck and came back to the van, shrugging into a pair of coveralls that he keeps for emergency dirty work -- clearly he's a man familiar with aging vehicles. After about 20 minutes of trading between flashlight holder and water pump inspector, I made a call to CarQuest and persuaded the parts guy to give me a short-term clean bill of health, based on our diagnosis of a slight leak from the water pump's weep hole. Sufficiently reassured (or deluded) we got on the road.
After a quick, loud dinner at the brew pub in Twisp, we rolled into the Reynolds Peak trailhead, 20+ miles up the Twisp River Road, late in the evening. Jeffrey tucked into his bivy and Anastasia and I set the alarm and closed up the van.
5:30 came and I'd had a better night's sleep than usual (we're packing a new air mattress for the van and it worked well, though it doesn't insulate as well when it's cold). As we got our gear ready, another group of three arrived and headed up the trail -- we ended up leapfrogging with them for the rest of the day.
The long, low-angle climb to the head of the valley went quickly, until we hit the postholing in the last 1/2 mile. Before our feet got soaked, we changed to boots and, with low morale, stared at the gully above. What Jeffrey described as a great ski was largely melted out and thick with slide alder. It took us about 45 minutes to go 200 feet, but the growing ribbon of continuous snow in the upper half of the gully renewed our enthusiasm and the last 2500 feet of climbing went much more quickly. We were soon drying our socks and lounging in the sun at the saddle between the North and South summits of Reynolds.
What a treat it was, to ski what we'd climbed. Nestled in between the descending west ribs of the summits of Reynolds, the bowl is wide and rolling for 2000 feet, until it pinches down and steepens considerably at the top of the gully we'd booted up. From here, another 1000 feet of skiing with only a short rocky downclimb (we skirted the bushwhack) had us back at our shoes. The long trail out was filled with laughs and chatter, as the alder-induced low morale had been boosted by perfect corn, stunning views and fine company.
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