East Dickey Chute

John and I skied an excellent gully off of the east ridge of Dickey in the Lost River Range on Wednesday. We got an early start from Boise and were originally going to attempt McCaleb but there were drifts in the road and we were faced with a pretty long walk just to get on snow. Then we thought about the Super Gully but we would have been a little late in getting up the gully and we had noticed a slide path lower in the gully. After getting back to town, there was a trip report from Dean Lords that had them in the Super Gully that day! We had already decided that we should go do something that had us making turns ASAP so we went north to Dickey. We opted to look for something different and took the road to Doublespring pass and walked in on supportive crust. We found what appeared to be an excellent chute. After following cow trails we stumbled onto a beautiful gully that streamed from the sub-peak. We skinned up until John had some icing problems on his skins. We stopped at an old snag and busted out a skin wax kit. John was an animal skinning with chunks that probably weighed as much as his skis! Problem solved (for the time being) we continued up. Straight up. We couldn't cut switches in to lessen the angle because the chute was too narrow. There was a thin skiff of wind deposited snow on crust and anything less that full skin on the surface and you were sliding.

Booting was out of the question. We wanted to go from the very top, but I was sinking in way too far to be worth it and our turn-back time was approaching.

We started down and encountered soft wind deposit, dust on crust, corn, trap crust, and finally slush over rock (ouch!). Something for everyone. The turns were fantastic once we dialed in what aspect of the chute had the corn.

We made it down a lot further than I expected. From the end of the slide path we got right to work doing the Mahogany Limbo. Once we were on the road it was smooth gliding almost back to the Suby. Beer and socks changed, happiness. It was a great day. Once again, I am very happy to be able to have solid partners. And if you are asked to play hooky to go to the mountains your answer should always be, "Does the Pope shit in the woods"? The only downer of the day is that John's homemade grouse jerky wasn't done in time to enjoy.