Telemark Chute - Kachina Peaks (near Flagstaff, AZ)

Maad likes to celebrate his birthday this time of year. I don't know why??? But he does, so he organized a little trip into the Kachina Peaks (near Flagstaff) via Lockett Meadow. We started off our approach on our mountain bikes around 8:30. We had our skis and boots attached to our packs. Well Maad had it easy, as he stashed his skis in the Inner Basin beforehand.

I believe it was 10:00 by the time we got to point on the Inner Basin Trail where we had to abandon our two-wheelers and start hoofing it up the hill. And it was 11:00 by the time picked our way up to Weatherford trail, at the base of Telemark Chute.

We then boot packed up about 500 vf to top of the strip of snow, and then strapped on the skis for the slide down the way we came. There weren't to many options for coming down, as the strip of snow was no wider than 40'. It was actually a fun little slip down. Once we got back on to Weatherford Trail, we walk up the trail about 100 yards and found the another gully with a strip of snow to ride back down on. After I filmed Maad and Jmoney heading down I slipped on my fourth turn and went into an uncontrolled slide and couldn't arrest. Well not until sliding about 20 feet and bowling over Maad who was positioned right in my path. He worked as a pretty good break.

We then pick out islands of snow back down the hill, and then it came to pulling off our skis. The walk back to the bikes was took about 15 minutes, and then another 30 minutes of biking back down road, we were back at the car.

Yeah, it was pretty boney, but we still skied in June in the beautiful state of Arizona.






Here's a vid of the day:





And here is a higher quality (Quicktime) version (note: it will take a few minutes to download):

Click to play

If you have the Google Earth on your computer, here is an interactive map of our tour route.