Spring Fling

The month of April always seems to bring some of the best storms of the year. I always look forward to this time of the year as coverage is usually good and the snowpack is pretty consolidated and safe.

This edit is up there for the level of fun had during editing.  It definitely isn't the best of skiing I've had all year, but the edit is fun to watch. 

Here's a little bit of the spring madness.


Spring Fling from Free 2 Be Productions on Vimeo.

Time For Upgrades

Since I've really gotten into making short film edits and want the best quality I can get, I've started thinking about upgrades more and more.  The first thing to do, other than get better at editing and video capture, is to get a better broadcast channel.  I recently moved all of my videos over to Vimeo under a Plus account.  I have thoughts on a new camera to use next season and most importantly I need to upgrade my processing hub with a new iMac.  But since that'll be upwards of $2800, that'll have to wait. 

My channel link for Free 2 Be Productions, which will hopefully be an LLC by the end of the summer, is:
http://www.vimeo.com/free2be

So to show you the visual quality of Vimeo, here's a short edit I put together of ski buddy Ross sending it on a very fun line.  Ross is about 42 years old by the way.  Just another testiment of mind over matter.


Ross MacD Sending It from Free 2 Be Productions on Vimeo.

Breakfast of Champions: Powder Before Work

I like most people, want to get each day of work off to a great start. I've always been told that you must start the day off right with a good breakfast. For some people it's Wheaties or Raisin Bran, maybe pancakes and eggs, or my favorites cream of wheat, grits, and bacon.

I had the opportunity to change things up the other day and I've never been more determined, happier, and successful in a single day of work. And I was a pleasant person to be around. Ah what did I change to get this way you ask?

I changed my breakfast. Introducing Alex's Breakfast of Champions: Powder Before Work

Easter Sunday Solo Tour

The week leading up to Easter Sunday has been a hard one for me personally.  Stress, irritation, frustration, and depression had worn me out.  Even the massive powder dump of April Fool's wasn't enough to shake me out of this funk.  I knew that I needed to get this issue off my mind and move on past it.  I decided that it was time for me to make my first solo backcountry tour. 

I determined that the necessity of staying safe, understanding conditions and snow factors, terrain assessment, being alone relying solely on myself, knowing that my beacon would only be good for a body recovery, and the physical demands of the area I was to ski, skin, and hike, was enough to be able to get over the past two weeks and to move on in life. 

I did choose wisely as I knew conditions were stabilized and would remain overall good for the day.  In the end, this tour proved to be what I needed in coming to terms with the external and internal issues that were affecting me: it was a definite success with lots of plan changes.  Solo touring has opened my eyes to a new realm and new understanding of myself and the snowpack. 

I definitely foresee more of this in the future.

A Little Careless: An Avalanche PSA

The other day I had a little reminder about needing to be conservative and safe in the backcountry and sidecountry. As we traveled out of bounds for our last lap of the day, we seemed to let our communication, patience, and training slip.

We got a little careless.

Here's a what happened shot from my helmet cam. We lucked out. 

First Ski Edit

Here's that short ski edit of my first day out that I have been promissing would be out.  I finally got "most" of the kinks out of the compressed file.  I think that it's not bad for my first edit ever, and using only about 90 seconds of ski footage to make it work.

Enjoy and please let me know what ya think:

My Winter Has Started

I finally got out on my sweet Icelantic Nomads.  It has been exactly 7 months and 5 days since I was last on these bad boys, and man it was sure nice.  As the snow was falling in huge flakes Sunday night, Christian and I hatched our plan to skirt our work for the day and head out to get some video footage and just get out for some preseason powder.  I will admit that I had a hard time falling asleep because I had the "Christmas Eve" jitters as I couldn't wait for the morning to come.

Christian and I decided not to get out there until the skies had cleared and we had good light for filming.  That meant we wouldn't even hit the trail head until closer to 10:00 am.  This was a nice change of pace as Christian usually likes to meet at his place around the wonderful hour of 6:00 am.

The day was great with beautiful bluebird skies and a foot of 5% Utah blower powder on a minimal snowpack of unconsolidated snow.  Christian did his usual "skirt the main path" routine and we ended up getting a little bushwhacking in.  Nothing like climbing through a tough thicket first day out to get you ready for a full season.

Now the skinning, on the other hand, kicked my butt as I haven't done any cardio in close to 2 months.  I knew that'd be the case, so I just pushed on.

I had a couple of good face shots and Christian had some sweet powder bursts. The snow, was great. All the hidden shark tooths, ie rocks, weren't.  I seemed to hit a rock on every turn and that sucked.  Fortunately my Nomads held up to the "Wasatch Tune" I gave them.  I did hit a pretty good rock right when I started a turn going at a decent speed and ended up face planting.  Luckily I didn't hit my face on hidden rocks. And for you, luckily we caught it on tape.

Look for my season goals and my first skiing video edit to come out in the next day or two.  For now, here are some pics:

Christian a.k.a "The Dude" now resorting to bushwhacking after deadending us

Traci, The Dude's cool wife

 Looking up at Flagstaff

Me setting up the camera with a nice sun flare

Wolverine Cirque in the Background

Ben Lomond Tour

Matt is now back in town for the time being. How is that good for me? I now have a local touring buddy. We had an impromptu ski tour this weekend up to Ben Lomond. I have never ever summitted Ben Lomond prior to this day. I've been up to the saddle and have played around many times in that area, but never topped the peak. That became an added bonus to the skiing.

The skin up was long and uh, long. The one thing that I don't like about touring in the Ogden area is the approaches. They are very long and flat before you start to actually ascend a slope. Matt and I came in through the north side. As we finally got to the high ridge, the wind started howling with gusts over 80 mph. That was absolutely brutal on the boot pack to the top.

We kind of slacked taking 4 hours to get to the summit. As we got to the top and I had a chance to look at the South Face Couloir. I got so excited as I was mere feet away from a season long goal, a goal that originated at the end of last season. I tried to convince Matt that we should drop the beautiful line, to test our ability. Matt stated that he didn't have enough juice in him to make the dangerous run, plus it was later in the day than is recommended for that line.

I had to accept the fact that I most likely would not attain that goal this season. However, seeing the line from the top helped me visualize my eventual descent, fortifying my confidence of success.

Matt and I skied two differing lines, but still close enough to see and rescue each other if need be. I watched Matt make his way to his first planned safe spot. Once he stopped, I dropped in. Here's my thought train that ensued: Ski cut hard to the left - two inch deep wind slab broke free but only ran 16 feet - I need to do one more cut before I feel good; Hard ski cut to the right - boot deep powder now, no signs of instability - Oh yeah let's get going; First turn - smooth and deep; Second turn - wind scowered hard pack - Oh crap hold tight; Third turn - punching wind crust - Hold on tight; Forth turn I'm going mach 9 this isn't going to be good - back to boot deep powder - Oh s#!t we're going down. At that point I was launched forward over the "handlebars" going head first into the snowpack. Man this is going to be tough.

The line was intense, not because the terrain was extremely steep, but because the spatial variability of the snowpack and quality was so drastic. Also my previously fractured fibula was a bit sore.

After we made our 1800 foot descent we had a lot of traversing and bushwhacking to get back to the car. We both were now getting drained as we spent most of our energy on the way up.

It was a good challenging tour that kept me in the realm of humility as I felt worked. It's good to have days like this every so often.

I apologize for the pic quality; I forgot my camera and used my iPhone for the documentation.

Tons of possibilities

Matt pushing through high winds

It all looks so good

The steep bootpack through 80 mph gusts

Ogden from Ben Lomond Peak

The South Face Couloir from the Summit

I think I'm stoked

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


Upper Chute of Argenta


Raymond Peak


Christian smiling on the summit


Super Mustache


Cardiff Fork


Mill B


West Chute Entrance


Christian taking charge


Working the tight corridor


Christian steezing the pow


Surface Hoar on the apron

Silverton Mountain Ski Trip: Not So Happy Birthday

So here's the scoop on the Silverton Mountain trip. I got arrested on my birthday. What happened? Well let's look into that a little more.

We started the morning bright and early with the first run hiking up as far as we could go. We were all stoked on being there and having a good time. So we are hiking on the boot pack (skis on our packs) and are behind and mixed in with a group that didn't have a guide with them. They walked under a rope that crossed the trail about 5 1/2 feet above the ground, doesn't have a sign stating guided only beyond that point, and we herd in right behind them. At this point we were were concerned that were crossed into a "guided only" area of the mountain. We didn't want to get into any trouble as we were skiing "unguided." This is a different type of a resort and there are a lot of rules left up to interpretation.

The sign at the top of the lift said our desired run was open, but didn't say if it was restricted to guided groups only or open to unguided skiers.

So the man in the front approaches the first mountain professional we see to clarify if we could ski our chosen run or not. He [the mountain professional], asks us which guide we were with and when we stated that we were unguided but wanted to check with him to make sure that we were allowed in this area, he grabs his radio, states that he has caught 4 poachers, and that he's sending them down to meet with the owner of the resort.

So we're kind of confused. We head down and meet a ski patroller that says we need to talk with the owner, that everything should be alright, and that once we explain our story, the owner should let us ski. So we meet the owner, tell him our story about 5 times, the tool asked us to retell it over and over, and then the sheriff's deputy shows up. Now we're detained, getting processed for "skiing out of bounds", and missing out on all the fun we intended on having for my birthday. I can't believe that this is going on. The owner clips our passes and walks away to talk to the deputy. As he walks back to us he says, "You guys are more than welcome to buy another pass and ski for the rest of the day."

EXCUSE ME?!?! So you kick us off your mountain, call the sheriff on us, talk with us till the deputy shows up, clip our passes that we didn't even get to use, and now say that we can pay for another pass to ski? Who do you think you are you pompous rat fink tool?!?!

So as the deputy talks with me, he genuinely says "Happy Birthday" and wishes that he didn't have to give me this citation which the owner told us was a misdemeanor with an "up to $1000" fine. Plus it's a summons citation not a pay this freaking huge fine citation, which means we have to return back to Silverton in a month. That's about 450 miles away from Ogden. Not a good thing. Luckily my buddy Clint was there with us, a Master Sergeant in the Air Force. This is good because the deputy tells us that the county judge and other individuals are all retired military and really like those in the military. That means that they might let us off.

Now we're all dejected, don't want to pay for another pass from this Mickey Mouse operation, but want to ski. We head up to the Red mountain Pass and find some low angle terrain for a short tour. Why low angle? Because the avalanche danger was still considerable.

I had the most sour taste in my mouth. How is all this crap happening on my birthday. We kept joking about it and ripping on the tool of an owner to try to mitigate the pain and agitation that we were experiencing.

The next day we were "marked" individuals at the resort. When we pulled up the owner pointed us out to all the other employees and was chatting about us on the radio. Seeing our doomed state before us, we decided to pay another $50 to upgrade to a guided pass. To some the day up the skiing was good for 4 day old snow.

The extremely sucky thing was that I sprained my knee on the last run of the day. All this crap on what was supposed to be a celebration, turned my 27th birthday into a wretched weekend to remember. I will admit this: this will be a funny story in the future. I'll update you on what happens with the charges when things come about.

Trip Pics

My Birthday Present to Myself: Powder Skis


The Dejected Tour Party


The "Unjustly Charged"


Group Pow Wow


So Many Possibilities


Group Shot:
Clint, Justin, Jared, Dave, Me


Getting Ready to Drop


Hike 2 Pow Wow


Chutin' It


Open Turns

Busy Busy Weekend: Avalanche Certification, Going Away Party, Soccer, and Hockey

This weekend was quite a busy one for me. The main event for this weekend was my Avalanche Level 1 Certification class. There were some avalanche incidents that happened on our second field day that deserve notice. I will hit on that later.

Friday after work I packed up my car, rushed through the traffic, and made it down to REI Salt Lake for the introduction lecture of the class. This was good and went over everything that I had been reading about in my preparation for this cert. Three hours later, we were done with the first day. Everyone left full of excitement due to the big storm coming in and the instabilities in the snow pack that would be troubled the next day.

Saturday started out with the storm front moving into Little Cottonwood Canyon as I was driving up. It was bound to be a huge dump. The flakes were large, heavy, and plentiful. I really just wanted to be out skiing. After our morning briefing, we divided up into groups and then skinned out to different areas. Our first stability tests were showing the obvious signs of new snow instability. We all expected that based on our previous discussion. However our first pit on a west facing slope had some unexpected surprises. The baselayer of the snow pack had huge, 3 mm, facets. This sugar actually shot out of the snowpack as we moved snow away from the base of our pit. All of our stability tests on every aspect that we looked at had this extremely weak layer of facets. There were also the melt freeze and rime/rain crusts from November prevalent on all aspects. After all of our our analyses on the different aspects and elevations, I decided that I will be very hesitant about going into the LCC backcountry on anything above 30 degrees slope angle till the end of January. There are way too many danger pockets. For instance one of the slopes we were testing on had about 10 lines on it from these snowboarders. After they saw our group's stability tests on that slope, they all bailed. Later after our class, our instructor for the day was able to get the whole slope to propagate and collapse by jumping on it and hitting a trigger point. Those snowboarders were only a few yards away from being in a very large avalanche.

It wasn't as hard to forgo skiing this new deep snow after seeing the dragon that existed within the snow pack. I talked with a couple of friends that are big into the backcountry and told them of what we found and warned them of the instabilities. I told them that the discussions today predicted that we'd hear about a couple of serious incidents by Monday.

After our first field session was over I drove up to Ogden for my friend Nazira's going away party. She now has to head back to Tajikistan because she wasn't able to obtain a work visa since she's been in the states for about 8 years on a student visa. So now it's 8:30 pm, I'm dead tired, and cannot fall asleep for a power nap for the life of me. Why was I trying to nap? Oh just because I had a indoor soccer game at 11:00 pm. As for that, we dominated the other team and played alright as a team.

So now I try to fall asleep and nothing. I last remember seeing 1:50 am on the alarm clack. The next thing I notice after I blinked was my alarm going off at 5:30 am. By this time, the second storm front had already rolled into Ogden and on was on its way to Salt Lake. Driving was miserable. There was slush, snow, and ice all over the road. There were a few times in which people, who were driving straight, not touching their brakes, and not driving too fast just spun out in front of me. I thought I was going to be in a big pile up at one point. It did take me almost 2 hours to get up to Alta.

So we grouped up and had a discussion about the avalanche forecast for the day. The forecast for the day was MODERATE. The question was asked if I agreed with it. I frowned and said that I thought it was wasn't as conservative as it should have been. Why didn't I agree with it? Well a moderate rating says that natural avalanches are very unlikely with skier trigger avalanches possible. I thought that there would be some natural avalanches today and that skier trigger avalanches were probable from our work done on Saturday. Our guesses on why it wasn't considerable were mainly along the lines of yesterday's huge temperature drop during the storm. That really helped to lighten up the snow and didn't put as much weight on the old snowpack. Today's agenda was more involved in safe travel and route finding in avalanche territory. It was nice because we finally got to ski. But to ski a lot, we had to skin a lot. This isn't the most fun thing for me since I was on regular telemark bindings and not on touring bindings that have a releasable pivot. After doing various stability tests, we dropped onto a 30 degree slope for our first run. It felt pretty good to finally be skiing, but we were still all very cautious, not wanting to cause a slide and get buried.

After we skinned up to Rocky Point we did another slope stability test session. We tried our luck on a steeper slope, and ended up getting some good lines in. We all, even multiple instructors, thought that the slope was going to slide. Honestly it probably could have if one of those hidden trigger spots was hit. As we were skiing out of that bowl up to the ridge, our head instructor Jake, also the head of the Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, received a call on a burial that just happened inbounds at Snowbird, 2 miles to the west of us. Jake booked out to the Alta resort and headed to the Bird as fast as he could. He later briefed us on what happened and I'll get to that.

We finished out the day with a couple of good turns and headed in for our debriefing. We were all awaiting news about the Snowbird burial. When Jake walked into the Alta library the whole room immediately turned to him and waited for the news. Jake looked as if he had just passed through hell. He had that look on his face that permeates stress, frustration, and despair. He told us that the girl was standing up on top of a buttress on Baldy when a slab broke above her. She was swept off this tall cliff and then carried over a series of smaller cliffs for another 200+ feet. The debry came to a stop on Chip's Run and she was buried. The search started immediately. They ended up finding her alive with a probe line. The sad thing was that she was carried over a lot of cliffs, buried about 5 feet down, and was buried for 50 minutes. The probability of survival drops to 30% at 30 minutes and drops further every minute after that. They started to perform CPR right away and then put the AED on her. We could see Life Flight try to get into her and it had to make 3 or 4 passes due to weather. It was a miracle that she was alive at the time but with that much trauma and that long of a burial, not that many people expected for her to survive. Sadly she didn't make it through the evening.

Some people around the area started to say that the resort was obviously negligent in opening that run today and must not have done avy control on that slope. I laughed at those comments knowing, and being confirmed by Jake, that Snowbird does avy control on that slope with the howitzer gun everyday (yeah the big artillery), that there had been over 100 skiers on that run before it happened, and I had been out to stability tests and snow profiles on similar aspects for the past two days. It was just a freak accident.

Anyway, I booked out of there to make it up to Ogden right in time for my hockey game. I was already dead from skinning 6+ miles, and now I have to play on a depleted bench. Yes I played like crap, and yes I was dead tired the whole time. This weekend warrior stuff sucks.

Groupmate smiling about the goods turns had


Day 2 Instructor Matt

It's About Time........ Time to Set Those Most Important Goals

Yeah, yeah, yeah...... I know: It has definitely been a long time since my last post. With this post I am going to outline the goals which mean the most to me: Winter Time Fun. After I detail the dreams, desires, goals, and "have-to's" that keep me going through the day, I'll brief you with a status update on what has happened since my last post.

Goals for the 2008-2009 Winter Season: (Not in any particular order, just as they pop in my mind, but important non-the-less)

1. Ski at least 45 days; includes both front country and backcountry
   
2. Ski at least 800,000 vertical feet (yes I have a watch that tracks this; last year about 600,000 feet)
   
3. Ski the the south face/couloir of Ben Lomond from the peak w/Christian
   
4. Ski Little Superior on a good powder day w/Christian: Round 2 = my terms
   
5. Get Avalanche Level 1 Certification
6. Get Avalanche Level 2 Certification
   
7. Huck a certain cliff on Banana Dayz in Big Cottonwood Canyon
8. Huck a certain cliff on Honeycomb Cliffs in Big Cottonwood Canyon
9. Drop Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole
10. Learn a backflip
11. Ski Silverton Mountain
12. Ski Monte Cristo in Little Cottonwood Canyon
13. Film one or two short ski mountaineering films w/Christian
    
14. Call in sick to work at least once for a weekday storm dump of 15 inches or more
15. Ascend all 3 pitches of Malan's Waterfall
    
16. Solo Willard Peak ice drainage at least 3 times
17. Take an ice climbing trip to Ouray, CO
18. Find a super hot Backcountry Babe to date (that's to satisfy your wishes Mother)

Ice Climbing in Cody, WY February 2007

So this is all I have for now, but trust you me, this list will be growing. It's getting late and my brain is ready to shut down, but before I turn in for the night, I need to give you that status update.

I have been quite busy, not just with playing, but work has picked up. Our new fiscal year started October 1 and so ended our period of performance for our last contract. Now onto 2 new contracts with a lot more taskings. These new contracts allowed for the UID team to grow from 9 individuals in Latyon, UT/Hill Air Force Base, to a team of 32 at Hill AFB, Peterson AFB (Fort Collins, CO), Tinker AFB (Oklahoma City, OK), Robins AFB (Warner Robins, GA), and Tobyhanna Army Depot (Scranton, PA). With all of this growth my responsibility has also grown. Because I did the initial ground work for 2 of the new tasks prior to the new hirings, I have been put as the Junior Project Lead for 2 teams. It's fun to finally have work and short suspense deadlines. Really my work load has gone up about 500%. I have already put in 41 hours this week, and I have decided to work tomorrow on my Regular Day Off (RDO) to finish some work.

But honestly, I'm finally having fun. I have no problem putting in the time now because the winter is coming and everyone knows that I will be travelling and having "sick days" frequently.

I have joined a Senior Hockey League and have played 3 games. Right now we're #1 with 3 wins and 35 goals for. I have 1 goal and 5 assists. Yes it is quite apparent that my team is stacked. I will admit that I played absolutely horrible last game. It is actually really hard to breath when your head is up your .......... well you get the idea.

I also started my last indoor soccer season tonight. We played really bad. We only had 2 subs and we had 2 new guys on the team. We did manage to win 11-0, even though I got beat bad 3 times on defense. I should have had 3 goals tonight but I did get 3 assists. That's not bad for the sweeper.

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.

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