Monday, May 26, 2008

Ski Mountaineering Epic

Friday was a crazy day. It was a valuable day. This is a day that has given me much experience and knowledge. It calmed my fears and allowed me to grow. It was a day of ski mountaineering, a day that would be called “epic.”

I had the day off and I decided to go skiing. That was a good decision because Little Cottonwood Canyon received over a foot of fresh snow. I went out with Christian again. We were skinning up to Little Superior Peak by 8:30. We had pretty good conditions with good cloud coverage to keep the sun off the snow but it was still a little warm that day. That ended up hurting us a bit later.

The skin up to Little Superior took about 90 minutes. We decided to ski the backside, skin up, and ski down Little Superior. Christian started to check the conditions. He did a ski cut along the top of the shot that we were going to do. This set off a small wet slide that traveled maybe 30 meters at a slow rate. We expected this and decided that we were in business. Christian headed down first and then paused at the bottom signaling for me to go. It had been a couple of weeks since I had skied and I could tell. I didn’t feel as comfortable as I normally did. This was just our warm up run and I needed it. I couldn’t believe how fast I was going on the snow; the snow was heavy. I just felt so out of rhythm. We decided not to go all the way to the valley floor but to skin up the ridge just to our right and get back up to Little Superior.

As we were skinning up this ridge, the face looked so sweet that we decided to ski it. Christian started out and made a few turns down the ridge heading into the trees, the safest route. On his third turn he sent a huge wet slide off. It was about 10 meters wide, traveling about 30 mph (and gaining), and went all the way to the valley floor. We immediately decided to bag that run.

We skinned back up to the top of the ridge and hiked up to Little Superior again. This time was a little harder. The ambient heat had started to melt the snow on top of the knife blade ridge we were hiking. This made it extremely slippery and we were walking over exposed cliffs on either side of us. There must have been inversion set in because the peak, at 10900 feet, was warmer than the valley floor at 8800 feet. As we were walking up to our drop in spot, our visibility went to about 50 feet. That sucked, as we needed to get down before the snow conditions worsened even more. It would have been even harder to see the exposed rocks and cliffs in those conditions. We decided to wait it out but being ready to move at anytime. However, we had decided on hiking the ridge back till we arrived at a safe descent as a back up plan.

Fifteen minutes later our white out started to break. The snow was horribly rotten by this time of the day. Christian started out. Every turn he made sent off a wet slide. That was good for one thing and bad for a couple of reasons. It was good because the wet sliding snow exposed any barely hidden, underlying rock. Now we could see where not to ski. Even though we would be skiing only a turn or two at a time, hitting one of those rocks on a 45 plus degree slope could send one cart wheeling down the slope over some cliffs. The first bad part of a wet slide was that it was a wet slide on a hanging snowfield, meaning that it was suspended stacked snow on cliffs, not a mountain slope. A large enough wet slide could take out the hanging snowfield. The second bad part was now we had only the variable rotten bed layer to ski on.

So Christian skis down, clearly the way and taking his time. I was watching for natural slides above him. When it came for me to drop in I was quite hesitant. I was extremely nervous; you could tell in my breathing, which was shaky and irregular. I knew that I was out of shape for making demanding tele-turns; I was afraid of making a mistake and ending up tumbling towards a cliff; I was afraid of sending a big slide towards Christian. My heart raced as I made my first few turns, trying to stay in the path that Christian cleared to prevent sending down a new slide. I took my time as I tried doing jump tele-turns down a steep slope with exposed rocks. Once I made it down a little cliff band to Christian, I had calmed down. My legs were so exhausted. We continued down the mountain through the trees, not stopping until we reached the road.

We gave an exhausted yell of triumph; we made it down without getting hurt and we were out of danger. As we looked back up to see our descent, we saw that we caused the whole right side of Superior to slide bit by bit. We knew that we had just survived an "epic."

I have not had an experience that was more technically demanding than this day. I am very much grateful that the conditions were less than favorable and that things came about as they did. Now I will be able to remain calm when the situation quickly deteriorates on the mountainside. I now have a confidence that I can make it down a rock exposed slope in less than perfect conditions when needed. And confidence, not cockiness, is a key requirement in ski mountaineering.

Fun at Work

Let me start off by saying that working for a "for-profit" organization that deals with a government "not-for-profit" organization is quite different. The first thing that is does for me is that it makes me glad for capitalism and "for-profit" organizations. The interaction that one has with that government organization can be very slow and arduous.

Anyway with that being said, I have managed to fit in with one of my" customers," The GTACS Sustainment Program Office. Instead of being the fly on the wall contractor, I have managed to become one of the guys. In doing so I decided to pull a little copycat joke with one of the guys in the program office. Lieutenant Dan, yes I have a Lt. Dan (Forrest Gump) in the program office, decided that we would pick on Neil, the Equipment Specialist. So I decided that I should look like him for a day. This is what happened:


Everyone seemed to get a kick out of it. I had a meeting with my company’s VP of Operations and he was laughing so hard at the beginning of the meeting that we couldn't get started on time. When someone would ask me why I did it, I would just reply, “I just needed to feel like more of a man today.”

The one person that hated it, of course, was Randi. I sent her a pic of it and she replied back as fast as humanly possible that I “need to fix that ASAP!” I told her that I would. The unfortunate thing for her, and myself, was that the guy I was pranking was out sick the day I did this. So I had to keep it for another day. But I did manage to keep it for a family birthday dinner. She was very tolerant of me and that was a good thing. Randi made sure that I took it off before our next birthday party the following night. But as long as it kept her happy, I was fine taking off my "manness."

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Happy Mother's Day: I love you Mom

I don't think you realize how much you mean to me. I am probably the only 26 year old that brags about how awesome his mother is, and was, while I was growing up. I really do love you.

You've kept me in your prayers, which is something I both know and feel. You raised me to be independent and to think on my own. You've sacrificed so much for me throughout my life that I am forever indebted to you. I wish we could be closer to each other in proximity.

As I sit here typing this post late at night, trying to put my thoughts together to let you know how I feel about you, it is turning out to be an inadequate means of expression. I wish I could be there when you read this, to look you in the eyes, give you a big hug, and tell you "I love you."

Happy Mother's Day

How this blog came to be

The idea of this blog came to me as I was thinking about what to do for Mother's Day. I know that my mother loves me and is always wondering what corner of the earth I am in now. I thought that this would be a great way to show you what's going on and, most importantly to you, that I'm still alive.

This blog is here to help stay in touch with my family, and to let everyone see what's going on in my life, even if I don't call for a couple months.

Spring Blessings From Heaven

April was a great month for the weekend trips in the backcountry. I had two great tours with a foot plus of blower pow to help relieve the week's stress.

The first tour was a double traverse; Little Cottonwood to Big Cottonwood and back. We started at the end of the road and skinned up to the Twin Lakes Bowl. We dropped our warm up run and skinned out. We continued skinning up the Alta Cat Track to the backside of Solitude and skied a 2000 foot run of untouched foot and an half powder. another short skin and we dropped another 1200 feet. We didn't skin out of that bowl due to natural avalanches occurring all around our chosen path out. We ended up stranded in Big Cottonwood Canyon until we hitch hiked up to Brighton and convinced the liftee to let us get a ride up to the top of the resort so we could skin and ski back to the other side of the mountain. He helped us out and we got back into the Twin Lakes Bowl. Once we skinned out of that we found ourselves looking into Alta with no one around. The sun had warmed up the snow tremendously by this time. The temp had risen 30 degrees since we started out that day. Our last run consisted of heavy snow on top of a good layer of consolidation. I was pretty tired so I took my time finding my last shot. When one of the guys had made it down and I started down my line. The heavy snow made me ski on the top layer and it was fast. I saw that I was right about to ski off a drop off that I was unfamiliar with. I turned hard before going off a cornice into some rocks below and started a small wet avalanche below and above me. It was fun. That day consisted of 9 hours, 15 miles, and 8000 vertical feet.

My second tour that month was with Christian. He took me on a hitch hiking traverse from Little Cottonwood to Big on April 25th. There are pics below detailing the adventure.

Even though the huge dumps brought high avalanche potential, I managed to stay alive amid small slides and enjoy the feeling of having wings on my feet.

Traveling on a huge avalanche slab in Little Cottonwood



A soft warm-up run on Banana Dayz



Getting ready to drop into my first couloir


Benson and Hedges Couloir


Exiting the excitement


End of a good tour with Christian