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Box Elder Basin

Changed climbing plans the night before this trip to join my friend on a ski trip to the saddle in the picture below. In the end, I never even saw them since I wanted an earlier start in order to get back in the afternoon. I ended up skiing the slopes on the right side of the picture as the slopes to the left on Box Elder Peak looked a bit rough for me. I have avoided skiing for 5 years and wasn't confident in my abilities to do those slopes. Turns out the slopes on the right were steeper than they appear in the picture.

The picture below is a zoom in of the slopes on the right in the picture above. You can see the boot path climbing up on the left rib, the black line was my ski route down. But, after only a few turns, one of my ski boots exploded into about 8 pieces. I couldn't believe it. There I was with the liner of the boot just exposed to the world. See next picture.

This is what was left, and it's the good side. Most of the pieces were up the hill. When I went to take the other boot off, the loose piece you see in the picture broke off that boot. I couldn't believe it, these were once really great boots for me. Since I wasn't far off the summer trail route, I left them for when I going back in early summer to climb Box Elder Peak.

This is looking down the rib I went up. As you can see, it's much steeper than it looks in the distance.

A nice view of Box Elder Peak, with expected storm starting to head into the area. The forcast was for lightning as well so I didn't want to be out there much anyway.

A view of Timp on the way out.

Looking back at the slopes from near the parking area. I was able to set my climbing boots into my ski bindings for the last mile on snowmobile trail, getting a little use out of the skies.