Friday, February 27, 2009

Skiing With Terry

Terry, the other ski buddy, and I finally got back out for a day without the kids. We had a pretty fun time, and it was good warm up session for Jackson Hole.

Enjoy the pics.

Twins Peaks


Riding up Little Cloud Chair


My "Go-to" skis are bigger than Terry's fat skis

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Avalanche Level 2 Certification

This was quite the busy weekend. I am still trying to recover from the skinning, digging, more skinning, cold, cornice trundling, and even more skinning. Notice there wasn't mention of skiing. Yeah, there wasn't a whole lot of skiing done with this certification.

We met early Saturday morning at Brighton Winter Resort in Big Cottonwood Canyon under a growing blanket of fresh 5% powder. We of course had the traditional night lecture prior to our first field day. So now we've packed up all of our gear into the Wasatch Mountaineering Club lodge. There's a lot of excitement to get out to see how the new snow is reacting with the old snowpack. I once again lucked out with the weather, getting fresh snow, and a lot of it, to study and help me with my understanding of avalanches.

So the first day was really tough sitting there in the middle of a white fluff dump, not being able to ski it, and having to dig snowpits for 4 hours. We went through the various stability tests and snowpack profile exercises. My first day instructor was from Telluride Colorado and brought a different aspect to avalanche study and stability analysis that we don't get in the Wasatch. We are so spoiled in terms of snowpack stability and snow quality in the Wasatch Front. Things are more temperamental in the San Juan Mountains. Mike was really able to grab my attention and keep me really interested in the snowpack analysis.

After we had collected our data for the day, we hiked up to the ridge and finally got to partake of the blessing from heaven. We came up to a 15' cliff that looked oh so nice and fun. I normally check out a cliff before hitting it, but the snow was so thick and fluffy that I really wanted to do it. I sat there thinking about it for a second and then backed off. Why did I back off? Well because my leg, specifically my right fibula about 2/3's up, was absolutely killing me from a bad wreck that I had on Tuesday at Snowbird dropping a cliff. I chose the 5 foot drop option instead.

Saturday night was fun. We had a potluck and I eventually won a game of trivial pursuit with Jim Knight, a Black Diamond marketing employee.

Sunday was a bluebird day with tons of powder left to be skied. We got our new instructors and headed out to the backcountry. We came to a slope that we knew would have some wind loading and some other stability issues. We triggered a very small slide on the way out to our first destination and that is what we're out here for. The slope we looked at had tracks from Saturday but also had obvious wind loading. We trundled two cornices to try triggering a slide. The first cornice was about the size of a refrigerator and the second the size of a compact car. No results. We determined the slope safe to do a ski cut. No results with the ski cut so we all went down one at a time. It turned out to be nice soft snow and it didn't hurt my leg at all.

Once we skinned back up to the ridge the wind picked up even more than earlier and we could see the snow change right in front of us. A good slab started to form and cracks were shooting out as we travelled on the safe part of the ridge.

Monday my group got to go out with Mr. Bruce Tremper himself. Bruce is the head of the Utah Avalanche Center, the author of "Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain", and an extremely cagey avalanche veteran. Our task for the day was to lead the group including our instructor, safely through avalanche terrain to a spot that would be a good area use as a test piece in producing Tuesday's avalanche forecast.

Today's snow had a wind crust and wasn't too pleasant. We found that yesterday's wind slabs had bonded well with the snow and it was difficult to trigger any avalanches on small test slopes. Bruce was able to finally trigger one on a 45 degree northeast facing slope while tied in. It was cool to see the avalanche in action. Then we were able to study the debris pile and become familiar with the snow profile of the slab. Really quite interesting. I loved it.

I had a really good extended weekend with a diverse group of individuals. I did happen to get a couple of phone numbers for new touring partners. Even though I didn't get to rest much, it amounted to good times. I now have a new view on backcountry travel: Instead of proclaiming a slope "safe" for descent, I now say that we could "get away" with descending the slope. Some times luck is what gets you down.

Trundling (cutting) a cornice



Look from above


Slope Tested and Approved



Avalanche Debris


Avalanche Test Slope


Flank Profile




The sun came out lighting up our run as we were leaving our test area

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

My Best Powder Day of the Year

I definitely had an awesome day today. After having a traffic jam heading into Little Cottonwood Canyon, which caused me to be extremely irritable, I eventually had my best ski day of the year. And that has put me into an extremely good, chipper mood.

I could not believe how many people were up at Snowbird. Seriously, half of Salt Lake City must have called in sick to go skiing. My dreams of a desolate Tuesday powder filled resort were smashed. To make it even worse, they all seemed to be in the tram line. There was no way that I could sit in a line and let all this new fresh blower snow get skied out right in front of me. Plus I'm on my sweet Pontoons for the first time and these bad sticks are designed specifically for deep powder steezefests.

Andy and I decided to forgo the tram line, went straight up Peruvian, and then through the tunnel out to Mineral Basin where the sun was poking through. After getting in two runs in some already adulterated snow, we headed back up to go Regulator Johnson. After flying down through that run, our luck changed. We were just getting off of Little Cloud lift low and behold, ski patrol dropped the rope to Road to Provo.

YES!!!!! Only 15 people in front of us on the way to unadulterated powder. "What did you just say Andy?!!?!?!?!?! You have to adjust your sock??!?!?!" So now I'm sitting there waiting on Andy and my legs are just twitching. I'm looking at the powder in front of me, a high priced, very rare commodity, about to be stolen from me, and getting extremely frustrated. That's it, I'm invoking the first rule of powder days:
  1. "There are no friends on a powder day."
So I told him I'd meet him down at the first loll, and skated off. Luck hit me again: Everyone in front of me was traversing out as far as they could, and those right in front of me were getting stuck in the deep snow piled thigh high on the usually groomed cat track. This is my sign. I couldn't believe that people where going out far for the lower angle lines. I stopped after about 100 yards, spotted an open, untouched line, and made ready.

I drop onto a 40 degree slope and straightline it for a bit to gain speed. Now that I've opened it up it's time to turn. Turn one: face shot, I smile. Turn two: huge face shot, over my head and into my throat. I'm choking. AWESOME!!!! The face shots were now all coming in over my head. I had to hold my breath and try to keep my mouth closed while the biggest smile of my life kept sneaking through. This is the first time that I've been choked and blinded from face shots. Instant euphoria.

That single run made my entire day and it was only the fourth run of the day.

Oh by the way, these powder skis are awesome! I felt like I was cheating. People around me were tip diving and getting stuck. I was floating through all of it with my rockered tips floating high, keeping me upright.

We really killed it today. I hit a couple of cliffs, got a ton of face shots, got reckless, got exhausted, and just slayed the powder. Here are a few shots from the day.

Cliff Drop (Andy sucks with a camera and zoomed in way too far to see the rest of the cliff, which was only about a 10 footer)


Andy's self portrait of his powder stokeage


A perfect snowflake on my glove: Life is good

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Author's Side Note

I have done a massive "bring ya up to speed" with my postings. There are a total of 5 new posts not counting this. The following are the new posts:
  1. Silverton Mountain Charges Update
  2. Jackson Hole Super Weekend
  3. Kessler West Couloir Tour
  4. New Look
  5. Silverton Mountain Ski Trip: Not So Happy Birthday

Silverton Mountain Charges Update

Things have finally come together. Having Clint on the trip paid off. Because he is in the Air Force, we were able to have free legal representation by a JAG (Judge Advocate General) in our dealings with San Juan County.

The Captain spoke with the San Juan County DA and helped us out. The DA agreed to not fine us or require to appear in court if we plead guilty to a "skiing out of bounds" petty offense and we'd only have to pay $26 each to cover the filing fees.

The petty offense will be on a permanent record, but does not constitute as a criminal record. This will not affect my job status, therefore, due to the convenience the bargain allows, I will be pleading guilty. What a joke of an incident. Thank goodness it's over.

Jackson Hole Super Weekend

Ok I'm way stoked. I finally got to Jackson. I grew out a killer mustache for my pass picture and now I get to ski this awesome terrain. In doing so I finally get to drop Corbett's Couloir.

So Jared, Trevor, and I left Ogden Saturday morning at 4:00 am......... uh 5:00 am. Yeah thanks for sleeping in Jared. To be brief, the snow was old and hard, but the challenge was fun.

So on day two I decided to drop Corbett's. Let's just say that things didn't go quite as planned. I sat on top of Corbett's studying the entry. The entry was full of uncovered rocks, snow knuckles, snow ruts, ice, and hard, hard snow. Now I am sitting there thinking about how horrible things could get, having the wind howl past my head, fearing failure and injury. This contributed to the intimidation I had already felt of the most famous ski run in America. I let the intimidation get to me and I committed my skis to go but not my upper body when I made my attempt. This caused quite the humorous tumble. Once I stopped sliding down the 50 degree slope, I laughed, looked up at Jared and Trevor, then continued down the couloir now free of the intimidation I felt just moments earlier. Enjoy the pics of my tumble. Corbett's 1 - Alex 0.

Corbett's here we go