Wallowa Backcountry - Norway Hut Day 2

As per usual, the first evening in the yurt was painful for me...I neglected to put in ear plugs and paid the price by getting around 2 hours of sleep that evening.  Soon enough, breakfast and coffee were in hand and the day was looking good.  We got up to watch the alpine glow on the surrounding peaks as the sun came up.
We had an all star breakfast of pancakes and once again had a lunch spread to buffet through for the day.  I made a sandwich and grabbed a few snacks to stash for the day.

The weather once again looked decidedly spring-like and it promised to be an amazing day to tour with some big views thanks to the clear skies.  I opted for a pretty light apparel mode (loose bike shirt with some sun sleeves that I could roll up/down if needed.  This proved to be the perfect choice as it felt like the temps got warm.

The guides took us back up the ridge we had been on the prior day but we kept heading north along the ridge which provided plenty of 'Kodak' moments.  We obliged, snapped away, and skinned on until we got to our first destination for the day:  Enchanted Forest.  This area was slightly north facing and the guides thought the snow stash would be promising.  They did not disappoint!!  The snow was awesome and the terrain was on par with the snow.  We dropped in one by one and our grins got bigger and wider as we found great snow and better turns!

What an awesome and unexpected surprise.  We ended up doing 3 laps in the area.  The guides put in a great uptrack for skinning and we lapped the area until it was more or less tracked out.  Each run was perfect and each skin back up was pleasant as the views just kept on giving some great photo ops!

After our the third run, we worked our way back up to the ridge and headed back south until we hit another open slope.  We transitioned back into ski/board mode and took some very buttery smooth turns in spring corn through an open glade.  I was blown away by just how good the snow was given the temps.  We eventually traversed into a stepper aspect that would put us at the bottom of the gulley that we had to skin out of and back to the yurt.

It was a full day with an amazing opportunity to get some spectacular touring and skiing in.  The snow was an awesome surprise and the we just soaked it all in like a thirsty sponge.

When we got back to the yurt, pre dinner munchies were laid out and we tackled the keg of IPA with resolve and blissful joy from the perfect day.  The beer once again flowed freely and before we knew it we were devouring another fine warm meal with some hot fudge brownie mix for dessert...did I mention how kick ass the guides were???  Amazing, these guys were hustling from dawn to dusk and never showed frustration.  They not only took good safe care of us, but found us incredible snow and pampered us with these incredible meals.  Big props to the crew!!!

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