Storm Skiing

Backcountry skiing in Upper Days Fork

Another classic Wasatch weekend... here's the rundown of what we were up to...

On Friday, Andrea and I both got out of work early and headed straight up to Alta. We made quick work of the climb up to Patsy Marley peak via Twin Lakes Pass (1700 feet in under an hour). Hoping for a spectacular sunset (which didn't happen because the storm was rapidly approaching), we settled for nice turns through recycled powder. It was still early enough to make another shorter (600 foot) run off the north side of the pass before darkness fell. Afterwards, we hung out up at Alta for a while before meeting Chris Davenport and seeing his new film about skiing in Antarctica, Australis. Check out the trailer on the Australis website if you haven't seen it yet. I'm planning to write more about meeting Chris and his new book in the upcoming week.

I mentioned that a storm rolled in as we were skiing on Friday. Well, this storm is picking up moisture from the Southern Pacific and absolutely drilling the Sierra Nevadas (total snowfall is expected to be somewhere between 6-10 feet). In the Wasatch, we'll probably end up with about 4 feet by the time it passes through on Tuesday. Anyways, it really started to come down on Friday night, and on Saturday the skiing was fantastic. We skinned up to Emma Ridge from Alta, and skied 5 laps in the Upper Days Fork Cirque, then one run back down to Alta. Six runs, 5000 vertical feet of powder skiing, in about 5.5 hours. Pretty awesome. Avalanche danger was moderate to considerable, but we made good terrain management choices and stayed safe. Sluffing was common on steep aspects, and by the end of the day, the wind had loaded some slopes to the point where I could intentionally trigger small slides with a hard ski cut. Upper Days is probably the best place we've skied so far in Utah - here's what it looks like when the visibility is better.

By this morning (Sunday) the avalanche danger had risen to high, and the snowfall rate had picked up even further, so it was a good day to ride the lifts at Solitude Mountain Resort. Eleven inches of fresh snow was there when we arrived, and it only got deeper as the day went on. Nonstop snow... we were SOAKED... but we skied powder all day, and it was awesome. In some areas, 2.5 feet deep awesome! Solitude is a great ski area... small (like Beaver Creek), but it gets tons of snow, and it seems like nobody skies there... I mean, today was a full-on powder day, and we skied right onto every single lift.

On my picasa site there is a full gallery with 57 pictures from the weekend. Some selected ones are below. Visibility / Light was poor all weekend (snowing and cloudy), but we still managed to get some decent shots...


Little Cottonwood Canyon


Mt Superior. An absolute classic that I can't wait to ski. It scares me and excites me at the same time.


Andrea skinning up to Patsy Marley on Friday afternoon


Andrea skiing the North face of Patsy Marley


Skiing Patsy Marley


Me and Chris Davenport. It was really cool to meet him and chat with him for a while.


Skiing on Saturday in Days Fork. You'll notice I'm wearing a helmet-cam. That's a new little toy... I'll get some footage up soon :-)


Andrea skinning up to Emma Ridge


Andrea ripping it off the top of Emma Ridge


Looking down at the area we were skiing, and the Reed & Benson Ridge behind me


Andrea on the Emma Ridge. We were skiing laps from this ridge down to the meadow on the bottom left of the picture.


Skiing the South side of the Cottonwood Ridge back to the car on Saturday


Skiing at Solitude on Sunday


It was DEEP

Two dozen bottomless powder runs is a great way to spend a Sunday

Big Cottonwood Weekend

A quick photo update from the weekend. About a foot of new snow fell on Friday night, so we skinned up Silver Fork with some friends on Saturday and got in about 4500 feet worth of perfect powder turns. Today, Andrea and I headed up Butler Fork to ski the East bowl of Mt Raymond. Visibility was poor to quite poor (fog), but it was nice and warm, and once the clouds lifted, it felt more like June than December!

The weather in SLC has been quite pleasant lately. Pretty warm in the valley (even Andrea was running in shorts this afternoon), and the snowpack in the mountains is deep and relatively stable. Can't ask for much more than that. We've made a lot of quality early season turns, and I've been running an average of ~120 miles a week for the past month, so its safe to say that winter is off to a great start!

Full gallery from the weekend: December 11-12 skiing

Andrea skinning in Silver Fork on Saturday

Hmmm which way was the wind coming from last night? :-)

Ridgeline skintrack

Our crew on the ridgeline

Transition zone

Can you spot me?

Andrea on our last run of Saturday

Skinning up to Mt Raymond today... couldn't see a thing!

The skies clearing on our way out. We skied the big obvious bowl in the center.

Kessler and its big avalanche paths

Andrea walking out the last quarter-mile... coverage was a little thin, and there was no point in letting her new skis hit any rocks.

Park City and White Pine

Wow... just a great weekend in the Wasatch...

Exactly a year ago this weekend, we took a little trip out here to check out SLC as a potential place to move to. We skied at Park City that weekend, and there were about 4 runs and a couple hundred acres open. There was no snow! But we still moved here, anyways ;-)

This year things have been a bit different in terms of snowfall. Its been quite an incredible early season, with the upper reaches of the Cottonwoods already having received about 12 feet of the white stuff. Since Andrea just got some new skis as an early Christmas present from me (and then outfitted herself with some lightweight AT boots and Dynafit bindings), we decided a day of lift-serviced skiing at Park City was a good way to get the feel for the new gear. Plus, pretty much the entire mountain was already open... what a difference a year makes! So, we skied PCMR on Saturday... no fresh snow, but there was nobody there, so we had the place to ourselves and got in a full day of skiing. True to what you'd expect from us, even an "inbounds" day included 4 hikes to access some better terrain.

On Sunday we met up with Mark, Lisa, and Sharon and headed up White Pine Canyon for some backcountry action. We were rewarded with surprisingly fantastic snow conditions (despite the fact that it hasn't snowed in 6 days), warm weather, and sunny, blue skies. We skied three of the prominent NW-facing chutes off Red Top, and had a really, really fun day. The total vertical was around 5,000 feet, which is perfect for early-season touring.

Full gallery of pics from the weekend here... some selected ones are below:

Andrea skiing Jupiter Peak at Park City Mountain

My turn

Andrea above Park City

Andrea skinning with Upper White Pine and White Baldy behind her

Our second run of the day on Sunday... our tracks to the right, and Lisa is dropping in to the left

This is probably when I was telling Andrea for the 10,000th time how much I love living in Utah

Enjoying the run out... the chutes we skied are up behind me

This is the zone we skied all day... pretty much tracked it out!

I love this area of the Wasatch

Another landscape scenic

4/5ths of our crew for the day

The Cottonwood Ridge, on our ski back to the trailhead

New York Cityscapes

Andrea and I headed to the Eastern seaboard last week to spend Turkey Day with my family. Our time was split between NYC (my sister lives in Brooklyn) and Connecticut (where we all got together at my aunt & uncle's house for the Turkey Day festivities). The weather was great, running lots of miles at sea-level was easy, and we ate tons and tons and tons of delicious food. Everyone had a fantastic time. I could never live in a place like NYC, but its always a fun place to visit and explore. And running on the rolling hills in southern CT was a nice change of pace.


Meanwhile, back in Utah, it snowed a lot, and according to all reports, the skiing was superb. Snowbird's season-to-date total is 136"... and its not even December!


A few selected pics from are trip are below. The whole gallery is here.


Times Square


Lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge


Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge


The M&Ms store in Times Square


The Krong family would make a great Christian rock group


Bailey boy, the big goofy standard poodle! He's a super-sweet puppy!


Our favorite candy characters

Pre-Thanksgiving Ski Touring

A major storm system is drilling all of the western mountain states, and we took advantage of it this weekend. A couple feet of snow have already fallen in the Wasatch, and by Wednesday morning, forecasts are predicting about 4 feet of total snow from this storm. Winter is here!

We got out with some friends from the Wasatch Mountain Club both days this weekend. On Saturday, we skinned up through Grizzly Gulch to the Davenport Hill zone, and took a few laps in Silver Fork. On Sunday, avalanche risk was moderately high in spots due to all the new snow and high winds, so we headed to Reynold's Peak and skied several awesome laps off the north facing aspects.

Super-fun weekend overall... made some great powder turns and knocked off about 8700 feet of vertical climbing! The dynafit bindings have already proved to be a great investment, and Andrea bought a pair last night, so she'll be a member of the Dynafit club after Turkey Day.


Skinning into Grizzly Gulch on Saturday... Alta down below... Mt Superior looming above


Andrea dropping into our first run of the day


Our second run, in Silver Fork, is the bowl behind Andrea


Lou and the remnants of some random Wasatch mine


Andrea and Tracy making our final ascent in some brutal wind


Graupel snow


Sunday morning after we got done running... when there is this much snow at 4,000 feet in the valley, you know its going to be a good day in the mountains!


Andrea, Tracy, and Lou skinning the west ridge of Reynold's Peak


Tracy


Andrea


A little video clip that Andrea took of me... feels good to be doing this again!

Here's a link to the rest of the pictures.

Site upgrades

I've widened the "main" viewing area (assuming most people view the site with a browser that is at least 1000 pixels wide) and I'm making the thumbnail photos a lot bigger. I'll probably also change the menu bar and make some pages that will organize and archive trip reports by activity (skiing, hiking, backpacking, etc). Just trying to improve the site for what will hopefully be an epic winter of trip reports and photos! Any other suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.


Andrea on Sunrise Peak (June 2010)

Mia got adopted

Mia wreaking havoc! :-)

Our amazing little foster puppy, Mia, got adopted over the weekend. She is going to a great family with a lots of room to play, a nice backyard, and they even have a ranch in Wyoming! We were really sad to see her go, but knowing that she is going to people who will give her lots of love and attention (like we gave her!) makes it easier.

We had Mia with us for a month, and I can't overstate how fun she was. She LOVED going running, and was doing 4-6 miles every morning, then going nuts at the dog parks at night. She definitely had a ton of energy!

Fostering was a great experience, and we'll definitely do it again. You get really attached to your little furry friend, but getting them out of the kennel, socialized, and trained really increases their chances of getting adopted by a great family. We're so happy for Mia!

Haven't skied in a while... conditions were reportedly bad (due to sleet / lack of visibility) yesterday. We had a full weekend of home improvement tasks on the agenda, anyways. Another 20" in the forecast for tomorrow... hopefully it all settles into a nice, stable base.


Andrea and Mia


Mia loved playing at the dog park in Sugar House



Mia was sooooo sweet once she used up all her energy and got sleepy


Mia and I on her last night with us


Outcome of one of the weekend projects... hanging bikes gives a room that "REI" look!

The early bird... schraps the pow

A paraphrased conversation after we got home on Saturday night, after meeting up with some other backcountry skiing enthusiasts, and finding out that I'm not the only one with gets really excited about early-morning mid-week dawn patrols...

Jake (grinning, attempting to hold back the true extent of enthusiasm): For a 5am
start in Big Cottonwood, I'll have to wake up, at the latest, at 4:15am.
Andrea: Why is it that the earlier the alarm gets set, the more excited you get about it?

No skiing since Halloween; it was super-warm and nice here all week. Andrea spent 5 days doing work training (on the beach) in Coronado, CA. Tough life. Hopefully she'll get a blog up with some pics soon (hint hint).

Another storm is in the works right now (its already accumulating outside my window), and 18-30" is in the cards for tomorrow, so we'll probably be getting out for some dawn patrols or sunset patrols later this week. Good timing for the resorts that are opening up this weekend.