The Y - Exercise or skiing?

I only have 3 more days off the rest of the month and every 3rd day I have a 28 hour shift. April's schedule sucks. Yesterday was one of the few days when I had an afternoon off. I had plenty of energy to spare and I wanted to put in a hard couple hour effort to keep me sane during my next long shift. Josh Anderson had skied all morning in LCC but was willing to join.

Josh crossing LCC creek

We decided to head up a debris filled Y with hopes of finding some soft snow up high. We skinned to the rock choke and then started booting. The center of the chute was rock hard but could be avoided on either side. After the first right hand turn we found ourselves looking and a wall to wall section of hard icy glaze. We made a few attempts and bashed our toes pretty hard but with no whippets or crampons it seemed foolish to try and climb past. All I wanted to do was keep booting! I thought about climbing a mix of sketchy rock/snow to get past the little icy patch but then remembered Teague Holmes's quote, "backcountry skiing shouldn't be confused with exercise." Although I use skiing as exercise all the time, in this situation I think he was right. We bailed and I ran instead. Thanks for the advice Teague!

Booting the choke

Trying to avoid icy patches

Glad to have skies on

Debris filled retreat