We do more by 9 am than most people do in a day

Woke up at 3:30 am yesterday to go skiing with my neighbor Jay. We drove out of town by 4 and headed up Slate River to park at the trailhead by the old Pittsburgh minesite about 10 miles outside of town. When we got to the trailhead we found two very fast moving streams had washed away the bridge and it was going to be impossible to cross on foot. We decided to drive my truck throught the rushing water on a jeep road next to the trail. I was pretty nervous about the depth so I had Jay lean out the passenger side door with a ski pole to probe for the depth. The water was moving pretty fast and eventually came up to the top of the wheel well but we were able to cross after an adrenaline producing few moments. From the jeep road we began our four hour ascent of Purple Mountain, which is a very steep and pointed peak that dominates the drive into town. After a couple of hours of skinning we began to get great views of the summit.
Here we are about 2 hours shy of the summit. Our ascent route took us to the base of the summit pyramid and then we took off our skis and front pointed and kicked steps in our ski boots up to the rocky ridge on the looker's right.
Here's Jay skinning up to me just before we popped off our skis to begin the hairy 50 degree front point to the ridge. After we gained the ridge we had about 20-30 minutes of a class 4 scramble through the first band of rocks. Then we had to cross the snow slope below the ridge because the cornice was huge. Crossing the slope was a little burly with about 900 ft of exposure above some gnarly rocks and chutes. A fall would have been pretty bad and Jay nearly went over backwards when he reached the next rock band because he punched through some pretty rotten snow. After that little bit of exposure it was an easy 5 minutes to the summit where we had some snacks and waited for the sun to soften the snow for our descent.
Here's the obligatory summit photo. The first few turns were a little unsteady for me as I haven't been on skis since March and the slope was super steep. After getting my skis under me we cut skiers left across the face to the rock band in the middle looker's right of the summit pyramid. We skied the line through the chute in the middle of the rock band. It was about 5 good turns of 45-50 degree tight chute skiing that opened up into the huge bowl we had skinned up. After about a good 3000 plus vertical feet of descending we were back at the truck. I was a little concerned about the stream crossing because the snowmelt had already begun even at such an early hour. Going back across the stream the water came up over the hood of the truck and scared us witless but we made it out ok. We were back in town in no time and having breakfast at the Paradise Cafe when most people were still waking up.