Memorial Day Weekend 2017 (Finally skied Deseret Peak!)

Andrea throwing the whippet salute after skiing the SE face of Superior on Wednesday

Little Cottonwood Canyon on Memorial Day

Another fairly great week of skiing and life in general. Andrea headed south with some friends for the long weekend, and I stayed home because I'm not bored with skiing yet. This is quite a time of the year in our neck of the woods - I like to call it "every outdoor activity is in play season." Seriously - what isn't good right now? You can ski, trail run, mountain bike, hike, golf, fish, play frisbee, whatever you want to do! 

The Alta-Collins finally dropped below 100" during the afternoon of Sunday the 28th. That was a pretty good triple digit run. Now we just ride it out as long as we can...

Wednesday May 24

Another round on Superior! We parked right at the bottom and skinned the first two-thirds of the SE face, then booted the rest. What a start to the day!

Saturday May 27

Two nights in a row with a good overnight freeze meant Saturday was going to be GOOD! I finally made it out to the Stansbury Mountains and Deseret Peak. What a spectacular area... just a totally different feel than the Central Wasatch. The road was open to the upper campground, and I only walked about a mile on the summer trail before switching over to skins. The first thing you see while approaching the upper basin is this aesthetic east facing couloir, so I climbed and skied that first. Then I went back up the east couloir and wrapped around the ridge to the Deseret Peak summit. From that point there was a delicious south facing bowl which I skied a couple times (butter smooth), and finished up the day skiing the west twin couloir. Honestly it was the best corn snow I've probably ever skied in Utah.

Sunday May 28

Headed up White Pine Canyon. Continuous snow line was ~8500 feet, which meant walking the summer trail for 2 miles before transitioning to skins. The upper canyon was just beautiful as always. I had no set plan, and ended up booting up and skiing Lake Chute because it looked pretty and it was a line I had never skied before. 

Monday May 29

Went up to Mt Superior from the chapel and skied the north side / cardiac bowl. The snow was a little too slushy after several nights in a row with no solid refreeze. 

Non-skiing... fit in a couple afternoon hikes as well - usual suspects: Olympus and Grandeur. Everything that isn't snow is SO GREEN right now! And after seven years of driving past the Temple Quarry trailhead on our way up LCC, I finally stopped on my way home Monday and ran the trail. Its fantastic! Perfect apres ski trail run!

Hopefully Andrea (hint, hey Andrea!) will do a recap of her trip to Escalante...

One last storm?

A break in the storms on Wednesday evening

7-8" on Wednesday, which is most likely the last significant snowfall until the fall. We skied a couple Collins laps at Alta on Wednesday night (finishing at 8:30pm when it was still light out!), and then went back to Mt Tuscarora to ski the Seagull Couloir in the sunshine on Saturday (and were treated to some parking lot puppies when we finished).

We opted for a longer run on Sunday, the true sign of shifting seasons.

The Alta-Collins snow depth is still at 113"!!

Wednesday May 17

Saturday May 20

Mixing it up

Summer and winter are battling it out... above 8500 feet there is still lots of snow, but we are in full spring/summer mode below that elevation. 

We got out to ski on Saturday but it was our first "early bail" of the entire season - conditions just weren't good: first overnight re-freeze of the week followed by high winds and clouds. Sunday was much better - I skied the Seagull Couloir on Mt Tuscarora for the first time. Very nice chute. It's the obvious line in the photo below.

To mix things up a bit, we headed to Millcreek Canyon for a pair of hikes this week. The obvious ones, Grandeur and Aire. Everything is just lush and green and beautiful right now. We (even Jake!) are enjoying the transition between seasons.