Zoa Peak - December 11th 2022

 Finally got out to test my splitboard on my first day ski touring and it went great! I had heard of Zoa Peak being a great beginner spot and after seeing Gabby and Phil commenting on a recent TR about it I asked them if they wanted to go with Sam, Coen, Jebby and I and it was a plan.

 

We met at the trailhead at ~10 since its not a long hike and tested our gear out before heading up. The first 2km or so is on a pipeline right of way so its very wide and clear of trees although the snow pack was low enough there was still some shrubbery to deal with. The first hill you have to climb out of the parking lot is the steepest and it definitely gave me a bit of trouble on my skis but we made it up quick. After that its smooth sailing to the turn off for the ridge trail proper which we made in about an hour. We headed up in to the trees and the first 500m or so was very dense but soon we were in the meadows.

The meadows flatten out and soon enough we were at the false summit where most people stop and we had lunch. The true summit was only half a kilometre away but it involved losing and re-gaining ~100m. Coen, Sam and Jebby decided to head down as they knew we would go down much faster than them and we decided to switch to downhill mode, go up and bag the true summit and then come down. Sounds simple but it took a long time. First off Phil had a bunch of troubles with his bindings which ended up making Gabby and I waste some time at the col between false and true summits wasting. Eventually he told us to just go without him and we skinned up to the true summit. Then I had a fair amount of trouble switching back to board mode and we had to do this 2-3 more times to return to the false summit. But thats practice, right?

Once we got back to the false summit it was a straight shot down to the truck. I had some troubles, especially at the beginning where it was kind of flat and I had to maintain speed which was difficult. I definitely noticed the extra flexibility in the splitboard vs before I had split it but I made it down without much event. At one point I got separated from Phil and Gabby and just went all the way down without them figuring they'd meet me there. When I got back to Sam and Coen I had a few missed calls from Gabby, the had been waiting and they laughed when I told them I was at the bottom. We headed home at ~3:30. Great day!!