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| [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.
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