New Year’s Eve 2013… The end of a, yes I said it, epic year. We had initially planned to drive to Telluride on Dec 31st, but since the snow kept falling over Jackson (and not at all over Telluride), and since Matt and Alyssa were coming over from Lander, we decided to stay put.
After 6 days of skiing out of 7 possible, I was sort of up for a bit of a short and easy day (I know, I am ashamed. Toughen up god dammit!). Well, that didn’t really happen. Matt and Alyssa’s friend Ben (Ben 1 = the bearded Ben) were planning a tour to Disappointment Peak and were wondering if we wanted to tag along. Yikes. The approach to Disappointment peak is on the scale of two times that of Mavericks… However, getting to go at least a bit off the beaten track with someone local is just an offer to good to turn down, even for me. And so, I decided to not even think about the length of the approach and just put one ski boot in front of the other for as long as it would take to get to wherever it was we were going. Good girl.
On the way in, we picked up Ben 2 (non-bearded Ben), and so there we were, a happy bunch of 6 trotting off Taggart lake trail head towards our end-of-year- disappointment.
After about 4 hours of skinning, we reached the ridge close to Surprise lake, which actually took me by surprise since I hadn’t even started grunting yet (hrm., ok I’ll admit that I was also quite happy that we weren’t going up to the actual peak. If we had done that, I would probably have grunted more than just a bit). So disappointing?
Disapointing – Hell no!
Down on Delta lake, we didn’t really get to see the Grand close(r) up, even though it is in there somewhere. But we did get to see the lonely walk of a snowboarder in deep snow.
From Delta lake, the ride down follows the canyon. It is prime time on a pillow line. So sorry I didn’t manage to get any good photos!
Well down on the valley floor, we just had to skin out the way we came in. For an hour or so. All in all, our tour ended up taking about 6-7 hours. After that, I was tired. Super tired. So after a very stylish New Year Dinner with 3 men without shirts (where the heck did I leave my photo skills!!) and one girl with her shirt on, I forgot to celebrate New Year and fell a sleep. It was great.
The Hungry Hen Report 
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