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SCOTT DIAMOND.
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Susan Watt, Steve McCabe and our President Ken Wenzel joined me today for the “Make it Look Easy” tour up to Lookout Mountain.
It didn’t quite go as planned. I’d hoped we’d shorten the tour by driving way way up the road but, after only 3 miles (and at about 4,100 feet), the road was not passible in my Subaru. Undaunted, we headed up the road. Mistake # 1 – the idiot leading the tour missed the turn onto NF4410 and we stayed on NF44 for 1.5 miles beyond the turnoff!! 🤬 . Backtracking and then head up NF4410.
There was quite a bit of ski on/ski off as we worked through the numerous bare spots. We didn’t really get to keep our skis on consistently until we hit about 5,000 feet (about 1.8 miles up NF4410).
From there it was smooth sailing. Well not quite. It is a pretty solid slog up the road to the junction at High Prairie (6,000 ft). But we knew that at that point it was only ~1 mile and and 400 feet of climbing to the Lookout summit (6529ft). At this point mistake #2 was made as I let Ken choose the route. He chose heading up the east side of Lookout. The east side was pretty steep. We dropped our skis, and very carefully kicked steps and planted our poles as we ascended the last bit. (El presidente es loco.) But somehow we made it and the views were great.
From there it got better. We followed an easier way off the summit, took a few falls in tree wells but made it back to High Prairie. The descent down the road was actually pretty sweet (at least until we hit the bare sections). Overall I recorded 17+ miles for the tour with ~2800 feet of climbing. The others politely reminded me that I had categorized this as an intermediate tour. 🤷♂️ But we had a great time.
I encourage you to check area. As more snow melts you’ll be able to drive further up and it is pretty darn magical up there.
A few pics are on the Facebook Page.
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