Dawn Patrol (photo: Will Wissman)

Sometimes things just don’t work out like you wanted them to. The snow had been ‘all time blower’ over the weekend, and the stability was good as-well. With clear skis in the forecast, we made plans to hike superior for Monday sunrise.Usually the biggestgamble for sunrise is that as the sun approaches a couple of wispy clouds will appear and block the early light long enough for more clouds to join in and totally screw you. Monday was different. When we got to the parking lot it was still really dark and the wind was blowing.It wasn’t too baddown lowbut we could see the ridges were getting ravaged. Of coursewind is a bad sign, not just forskiing conditions butfor avies too. Well,if the sunhad been up alreadywe’d have probablydecided to have breakfestand wait for the lifts to open. But, it wasn’t and the only way to really know what was going on was to get up there fora closer look.How bad could it be right?The wind was really strong, blowing most of the weekends fluff clear to Wendover. We’d climbed halfway so we might as well get up there and see for sure.

When I dropped in and made a ski cut,it looked like someone took astack of dinner plates and tried toslide them to the road. Nothing quite like hiking 3 hours for breakable crust. I tried a couple more turns, talk about awful, this was going to be my longest run ever. Oh well, at least there was nothing crusty about that sun coming up. It was one of the most beautiful sun rises I’ve seen in years, and it was cool to share a gnarely hike with some good friends. Down the road we’ll remember getting hosed on this one.