Free 2 Be: Kessler West Couloir Tour

This winter has been an odd one. We have not had the cold temperatures and frequent storms that please us powder hounds. Today is my RDO (Regular Day Off) and I'm taking advantage of it.

Christian and I met at his house at 5:30 am to ski the an aspect of Kessler Peak in Big Cottonwood Canyon. I was feeling quite stoked as the snow pack settled and stabilized. Christian isn't getting out as much anymore due to having a 5 month old baby boy that is never satisfied and always throws a fit.

We pull up to the Argenta slide path to 4 cars in front of us. There are already five headlamps on the way up. We are okay with this because there are plenty of options off the top of Keesler. Christian and I smashed out the 3500 vertical foot approach in 2 1/2 hours. With my new pivot touring binding, I'm able to keep up with Christian a lot easier than last year. You must know that Christian is a monster of a hiker, being able to pound out approaches while breaking trail, setting new skin tracks like none other. Christian claims that it was my new mustache that gave me the strength to keep up with him.

The view was great and the weather beautiful. We came across a very, very large wind slab about 3 feet deep , who knows how wide, over 300 feet long, in the middle of Argenta. We skinned to the side of it for the most part, only having to cross it closer to the top where the slab wasn't as hard or pronounced. We were feeling suspect of the top area stability. We did a couple of compression tests on Argenta and got some pretty good instability results on the newly wind deposited snow. Those signs weren't looking good if we were to ski Argenta, but we were planning going over to the west face. These tests were done on the east face prior to making the ridge. They helped us pick out a more conservative skin route to stay out of the potential avalanche danger.

We make the ridge and decided to take a short break. This break gave us time to refuel, check snowpack stability, decide on our potential routes, number of descents, and finalize our game plan.

Break over, time to get to work. With Christian being the more experienced backcountry traveler, he led the way. But trust me, there was plenty of fresh lines awaiting us. Surprisingly to us, the couloir turned to a two-faced 3730 vertical foot descent of tricky conditions. The left side was soft and fluffy, while the right side was suncrusted and unbreakable.

I skied pretty horribly. I am not in condition for the backcountry. After a really long tour my legs are so blasted that I can't make the same turns as if I had a warm up run or two. Hopefully I'll get conditioned to the point where this isn't a problem. Anyhow, enjoy the following pictures.

Sunrise across the way