skistories: South Early Winter Spire/Porcupine Ridge

Not sure of what we were going to ski, Mike and I decided to bag some chutes that had been in our minds awhile. So we skied this one on the right (between the Concord and Lexington Spires), which was nice. Then went further uphill and decided to bag the one in the Early Winter Spires. We looked up it and thought, OK, let's go to the fork and ski down from there. Then we got to the fork and thought, well, it really doesn't look too bad, and it's not very long either, so we continued on. It got steeper. One pole got switched over to use like an ax, the whippet was digging deep, kick steps went from one to numerous kicks per step. OK, it looks like it'll end at that 3 foot wide choke. Get up to the choke, nope, that's the halfway point. And it gets tighter. Wow, quite an adrenaline pumping couloir for a casual afternoon tour. Mike didn't want to ski the choke so he down-climbed to gear up under it, while I went to the top to check out the view. My skis were shorter and have a bit of damage so I didn't mind skiing it. I felt better once I was clicked into my skis, then made a few turns, jumping high and keeping them tight between the rock walls. Then it got very narrow with tricky snow, calling for some side slipping with a few turns. The choke was a bit tricky. Then after that, Mike and I had Scott Schmidt style jump-turn skiing back down the couloir. The rest of the day, "Wow, I can't believe we just skied that."