With the grandest of plans in the makings for Sunday, Kelly, Shane, Ben and I decided to take a leisurely stroll up the Cog in search of soft snow outside of avalanche terrain on Saturday.  We surmised that the light East winds and recent snowfall would have loaded up the Cog pleasantly, so we went to investigate.  What we found was a decent amount of skier and snowshoer traffic, a bit less snow than we’d hoped for, and a bit more fog than would have been ideal for route finding above treeline…

All nitpicking aside, it turned out to be a decent tour.  After an 11 o’clock start, we pushed past treeline around 1PM.  We ate and drank, and considered our options: climb into the fog in search of snowfields or just ski the Cog.  With poor visibility and a late start, we opted to just enjoy the Cog rather than shamble around the summit cone in search of the elusive pow.  After a brief schralp through some wind affected crusts above treeline, we cruised a tracked, but soft Cog and enjoyed just about every minute of it!

Gear prep…

Gear failure…

Ready for action!

Low vis.

The good part…