Christmas Eve Morning Green Descent

Got out pretty early this morning before hitting the road for what is sure to be a long day/evening of driving home to Nebraska to see my parents for Christmas.  I ran the 15min of streets to the Gregory lot and then trudged to the summit via the First Saddle route.  For some reason I wore my absolute dullest pair of Microspikes (the "spikes" are worn down to flat nubs) this morning, so I wasn't getting great purchase in the punchy and somewhat loose snow, but I was still impressed at how relatively well the trail had set up overnight, even compared to yesterday evening.  This was enough to convince me to go for a fast time on the descent via the standard frontside route of Greenman-Saddlerock-Amphitheater, inspired by Homie's antics of the past month or so.

I took off strong right from the top and it was a total kamikaze blast careening through switchbacks, leaping down drops and swinging around trees all with very little concern for catching a toe or tripping on anything; I was anaerobic pretty much the entire way down, with the unstable, soft footing definitely making me work harder than usual.  I've actually never gone all-out on a Green descent, snow conditions or not, so didn't really know what to expect, but summit post to Amphi/Baseline junction post was 14:08 with another 6 seconds to the Gregory lot pavement for a 14:14.  I would say that I was taking some pretty wild risks and was definitely out-of-control at times, but with all the deep powder everywhere it never felt that risky.  I only thought once or twice about how heinously unpleasant it would be to miscalculate a footplant, hyperextend a knee and break my leg again; the only split I dared take my eyes off the trail to glance at my watch for was an 11:32 at the Saddle Rock/Amphi junction.

Trail conditions were definitely not perfect, especially on Greenman where it's still quite loose and unconsolidated and I think just a fresh, sharp pair of Microspikes alone would've easily carried me under 14min this morning as I was definitely losing time sliding out on turns.  With a perfect packed track I think sub-13 might be possible.  I'm super bummed that I'm driving to Nebraska today and will miss the next few days of what are sure to be stellar trail conditions, but so it goes.  BRING IT, HOMIE!

A couple pics from the uphill portion of the morning:

Longs Peak.

Sunrise reflected on the NE ridge.

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