Hyalite Peak Story

Usually I get in a few backcountry tours with Tom each winter, and we hadn't done anything yet. Since the weather has been warm, we decided that high elevation was in order. Hyalite Peak has some good vertical between the 7 miles in, so we went for it.
We woke up early and were at the trailhead by 7:30 kind of ready to go. We were only kind of ready because neither of our coffee's were wanting to work. Well, we threw the skins on the skis and took off up trail.
Luckily the first few miles of the trail are pretty flat so things were easy going the first little bit. The last 2 miles, on the other hand, start to get a little bit of an elevation gain. Around mile six, we come straight up to a small saddle and are in the bowl to get to Hyalite Peak. Once we got into the bowl, we could see lines everywhere. It's this amazing cirque of peaks that has chutes and wide open lines.
We made out way up the safest way possible, since avalanche danger was considerable, and ended up right below Hyalite Peak. We both wanted to summit, but we thought that might be a bit too dangerous. So we turned around and checked out some lines on the other side of the cirque. This is where we saw a few good chutes and decided to go for it.
I put in the first skin track angling up the side and stability seemed to be pretty good. Tom then followed up and we found ourselves on a ridge between two huge cirques. We were essentially between these two bowls standing on the ridge. It looked like there were great routes no matter where we went. Unfortunately if we went down the back side, we probably would have cliffed out and been screwed. Therefore we stuck to out side and lapped the chutes a couple times. These things were just open enough to get a few good turns in and either go over the cliff at the bottom or b line it between a couple of rock faces. When I dropped into my chute, I found myself on some badly windblown crust and therefore decided going off the cliff was probably a bad idea. I B lined it through the rocks and skied down to some great powder.
After we left the cirque, we skied the trail all the way back to the car. A good seven miles of skiing!! What a great run. We found ourselves around great powder and even managed to hit a few cliffs. Since I'm somehow obsessed with cliffs, I decided to go right off one and got rocked on the landing. I essentially landed it, but my weight was going forward too much and I proceeded to land on my head a little ways down the slope (pictures are below). After that we managed to hit another cliff that was even bigger. I say we, but I mean me. Tom didn't really want to hit a 20 footer. I can't blame him, but it was pretty sweet. By this point, though, my legs were incredibly tired and I just flopped down when I landed. 0 for 2. Oh well, I'll get em next time.
Well, the rest of the way was skiing practically on the skin trail so we could go fast enough on the flat parts. That made for some exciting skiing through the trees trying to pick up speed.
The next day was a very bad surprise for me. I apparently had hit my head a bit harder than I thought. When I woke up I went to the office to do some work and kept misspelling words. It was horrible. I kept having to think really hard and even managed to find myself just sitting there staring at the computer not knowing what I was doing. I figured these were bad signs. The next few days I spent with a massive headache and no ability to concentrate. I imagine it was a minor concussion, but since I never went to the doctor, I can't be sure. I know I should have gone, but it's just not fun going to the doctors. Especially since they were going to tell me something I most likely already knew. Why would I pay someone to tell me something I already know?
Well, after about a week the headaches went away and I was mostly back to my normal self. Apparently wearing a helmet doesn't mean you're invincible. Bummer.

Hyalite Peak

I'll have to add a little story later, but the short story is Tom and I both got hurt and the skin in was 8 miles. My injury was my neck and head (my helmet works... it's official) and Tom's was a toe injury. Sounds like weak sauce but he definitely had blood in the sock when we got back. Tomorrow I'll get to the details. Have fun looking at the pictures.