Day 7 - 11/29/10

[Sam Piper, etching his signature into Toledo Bowl]

“SOME OF THE BEST early season powder ever!”   That’s how Brad described today’s five percent powder that piled up on the central Wasatch over the late weekend.  Right he was.

We climbed Toledo Bowl, moving quickly up a firm skin track tromped in by some Dawn Patrollers.  At the ridgeline, we were finally able to stand upright without being clobbered by the high winds that have characterized November skiing this year.  With a lot of delicious options beckoning on all aspects, we decided on the thousand-foot Holy Toledo chute.  The entry was wind-scoured and cross-loaded.  But once down into the choke-point of the chute, the snow got lighter and more consistent, skiing out for the best run of the season.  (KSL reports that this is the third wettest November in recorded history.)

[preparing to drop into Holy Toledo]

From the basin, we watched two, then four other skiers scallop their tracks down from the Toledo ridge.  We were joined at the basin by Sam and Kyle, ski patrollers from The Canyons.  In the next group, one of the women said “I know you” and I realized it was Caroline George, a rockstar mixed ice climber (http://www.carolinegeorge.com) who was skiing with her husband, Adam.  We met last year at the Ouray Ice Climbing Fest.  But we won’t see her at the 2011 Fest.  She’s off to climb in Antarctica, obviously getting a little acclimatization, given the single-digit temperatures.

Mid-day, we skied a largely passed-over chute on Benson Ridge and made a note of the entry.  Then the trip home reinforced one of the reasons that I love winter backcountry exploring.  People tend to regard the mountains as a uniform white massif, a single organism.  But I’ve personally learned, exploring mountains step by step, that on any day you might traverse dozens of microclimates: a pocket of downy powder, a spine of scaly ice, followed by a sun-exposed swamp of mush, and then a sub-zero gulch.  And this was true as we skied down Cardiff Bowl into deeper, lusher snow, whooping our way down to the highway.

Day's Vertical: 3,600.  Season to Date: 24,200.

Day 6 - 11/27/10

[Dynafit-light]

[Pasadena Thanksgiving family dinner]

JOHN RIGNEY and I violated the “earn your turns” code and rode Brighton chairs to the ridge line to drop into one of the headwall chutes descending into Snake Creek drainage.  I had returned Friday night from a five day Thanksgiving turnaround to Pasadena, where I hosted the family Thanksgiving dinner.  John, a backcountry ski mate since 1997, was shaking down new Black Diamond gear: Quadrant boots and BD’s new superlight Drift ski, paired with Dynafit TFTs.  The Dynafit binding line, long-proven as a bomber downhill tool, does not offer the step-in ease of, say, the Fritschi line.  With their sensitive toe claw and tricky revolving sequence of the heel towers, the Dynafits can present the prospect of a long learning curve.  But John loved his new combo and adapted quickly to the idiosyncrasies of Dynafit engineering.  And though it was hard to find true soft powder on any aspect, we skied some decent, steep lines, and then got to enjoy a relaxed in-bounds return to our car in the Brighton parking lot.

Day's Vertical: 2,200.  Season to Date: 20,600.

Day 5 - 11/21/10

[breaking off cornices]

LIKE SHARKS in the surf, oil slicks on NASCAR tracks, avalanches are a risk-factor in the backcountry ecology.  All out-of-bound travel must equally factor the posted avalanche forecast, knowledge of the season’s snowfall history, the accumulated experience of how snow behaves on known terrain, and finally that intangible element of instinct.

With the Utah Avalanche Center (see link in right panel) forecasting high hazards on many aspects, Brad and I chose a low-risk climb up Grizzly Gulch to Davenport Ridge and then skied lower angle pitches where the snow is anchored by fairly tight trees.  We found fluffy, light snow and the first real “face-shots” of the season in terrain that doesn’t appear to get a lot of traffic.

[avalanche run-out zone after intentional release]

Just as a reminder of the hazard, Brad did a ski cut at the top of a chute below Davenport cliffs, creating an intentional release before quickly swinging back into the safety of the trees.  The sharp pressure on the edge of the chute produced the classic “whoomp” of collapsing sub layers, followed by a large release, with an eight-inch crown that ran about four hundred feet.

[pluming pow]

We met up with two snowboarders who had a less predictable day.  The UofU students were searching for a “yurt” hidden east of the Silverfork area.  As Brad and I climbed for a third run, we heard someone calling out far down the drainage.  Were they lost, injured? Was somebody buried?  We quickly transitioned from skins to downhill mode and shot down the slope to discover that the snowboarders had become separated in the maze of different gullies and drainages.  With the boarders reunited, we started the climb back to home base and analyzed our emergency procedures, finding that we need to refine our communication and rescue procedures.

Day's Vertical: 4,200  Season to Date: 18,400

Day 4 - 11/20/10

[lunch break in the trees]

MORE BLUSTER THAN DUSTER.  That's the story this early season with lots of high winds blowing the sparse snowfall off the mountain.  Again, starting from the Alta lodge parking lot, we climbed swiftly to the ridge above Toledo Bowl, indicating that I'm building red blood cells to carry lots of oxygen to the muscles.  However, at the ridge line, the wind was blowing so fiercely and the visibility so poor that we had to do a gut check to decide if we should continue.  The vote was "yes" and with a little tricky downclimbing, we were rewarded with a good run down Holy Moly.  Visibility for the first few turns was about 10 percent, with the surface conditions unknown.  As I edged hard for the first turn and the edges held, I thought about all the times I had skied with friends in-bounds at the resorts and opted for an easy warm-up run to prepare for more challenging terrain.  When skiing the backcountry, oftentimes the most challenging turns you will make all day are your first turns out of the box -- often on steep pitches and uncertain surfaces that might be:

• Boilerplate
• Ice
• Breakable crust
• Powder.

This is what makes a day in the backcountry.  And for this day, we found some terrific thick powder on both sides of Benson Ridge.  And the best news: a 100 percent chance of one to two feet of fresh pow.

Day's Vertical: 3,900.  Season to Date: 14,200.

Day 3 - 11/18/10

[overlooking Alta]

THOUGH THE SNOW report was not promising, Brad and I set off up Emma's Ridge from the upper Alta parking lot.  As we neared the ridge, Brad mentioned that he had met a skier the past Saturday who had skied a chute called Oingo-Boingo, the weasternmost of a crow's foot sequence of three couloirs, not usually in shape for skiing until later in the season.  The snow in the first two chutes appeared to be well filled-in and as we approached the entry to Oingo-Boingo, we decided on taking a shot.
The single enter-point showed signs of a small release, but it had not run out into the main gulley, which indicated stability.  The first few turns on boiler-plate created a no-fall zone, but edging was sufficient.  We then skied over a short rib that opened into a 45 degree pitch of highly skiable, consolidated powder.  The following video tells the rest.

After the opening thrill of Oingo-Boingo, we climbed and skied several more hours of wind-wacked terrain in Silverfork.   The turns weren't pretty, but it was good early season training for skiing the array of highly variable terrain that is encountered in the back country.

After a largely heinous return to the road across rocky, wind-smacked terrain in Grizzly Gulch, we bolted downhill to the always cheap and filling 2 for 1 dinner special at Carino's.


Day's Vertical: 4,600.  Season to Date: 10,300.

Day 3 - Not!

I WAS UP around 5:30 am, ready for another assault on the Utah backcountry, my body clock still set to Eastern Time.  Until I heard the morning's report from the Utah Avalanche Forecast Bureau which indicated that overnight winds, peaking at 100 mph, had created high avalanche hazards at all aspects over 9,000 feet.  So I responded as would any extreme sport athlete: back to bed for a late sleep-in.


Day's Vertical: 0.  Season to Date: 5,700.

Day 2 - 11/18/10

BIG WINDS, GUSTING over 50 mph, kept a lot of people out of the backcountry.  In fact, on our way up Power Line from the Alta Access Road, Brad and I climbed with three other skiers who returned to the road from the Power Line saddle.

[hiking back to car; happy]

We continued over the ridge and skied a near white-out down into the Benson Bowl area, and then did two laps before turning back to the ridge line for the drop back into Little Cottonwood.  Several days of accumulation had been redistributed into natural collection points, created some wind-loaded slabs that appeared stable, with only a few cracks and short releases.  A warm flow brought in surges of pellet-like grauple, propelled by fierce winds that several times sent us into drop-and-cover mode.  Later, when we got back to home base, Brad checked reports from the Superior weather station which clocked wind gusts of up to 100 mph before it crapped out.
But the unqualified jewel of the day was our home run back down to the car which was about 1500 feet of consolidated but creamy powder.  Later, on the phone to my girlfriend in New York, she asked about the day.  I told her: probably a walk through hell for most folk, but   heaven for us backcountry people.

Day's Vertical: 3,200.  Season to Date: 5,700.

Day 1 -- 11/2/10

[season's first ascent up Sugarloaf]

EVERY JOURNEY begins with a first step.  And every backcountry ski season starts, on climbing skins, one shuffling stride at a time.  Skiing inbounds at Alta hardly fits the definition of backcountry skiing, even if it's preseason and the biggest obstacles are circumventing the concentrated blizzards of the snow machines and the frozen death cookies created by snow grooming equipment preparing the trails for opening day, still some three weeks off.

[Brad Carroll]

But my regular ski partner, Brad Carroll, and I did manage to break out the ski gear to get out on the (thin) snow cover provided by anemic first volleys of winter and climb from Albion Base to the top of Sugarloaf Peak at 11,051.  This initiates the process of building red blood cells and start working muscle groups that only function as a fluid unity by actually climbing and skiing.  A few of these shake-down days are absolutely mandatory to sort out the gear and anatomy problems that occur from a six-month hiatus in ski activity.  Here were some of the bruising discoveries of that first day:

• Ski bases, last used on spring granular, need wax.
• Ski poles are necessary (forgotten at home but the day saved by a ski mechanic at Alta).
• Feet flatten and change shape over the summer and are not immediately ready for the hell-boxes of last season's ski boot.
• Early season skiing can be warm and mushy as late season.  Note to self: next time bring skin glop.

I did a lot of mountaineering this summer, including a third ascent of Mt. Rainier, so the climb is not overly taxing and I am happily surprised by my good lungs as we reach the top of Sugarloaf lift and stop for lunch and hydration.  Then up to the top of Sugarloaf Peak, gained by bootpack over the wind-scoured summit mound.

[scoured peak of Sugarloaf]

Coming down, we found a shallow gully with sufficient wind-loaded creamcheese, good for about twenty turns before we rejoined the regular trail system for a runout of decent groomers back to the parking lot.

Day One: a pleasant success, though my feet like they have been worked over with hammers and vises.  Back at Salt Lake basecamp, first order of business is wax and a visit to the boot mechanic.

Day's Vertical: 2,500'.  Season to Date: 2,500.