Winter Performance Review

So another winter come and gone. Today marked my end of winter; I took the ski cargo box off my car. Let's go ahead and look at my goal performance.

GOALS:

1. Ski at least 45 days: 57 Days; 15 Backcountry
   
2. Ski at least 800,000 vertical feet: 722,345 feet
   
3. Ski the the south face/couloir of Ben Lomond from the peak w/Christian: No
   
4. Ski Little Superior on a good powder day w/Christian: No
5. Get Avalanche Level 1 Certification: COMPLETED
6. Get Avalanche Level 2 Certification: COMPLETED
7. Huck a certain cliff on Banana Dayz in Big Cottonwood Canyon: COMPLETED
8. Huck a certain cliff on Honeycomb Cliffs in Big Cottonwood Canyon: COMPLETED
9. Drop Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole: COMPLETED 3 times
   
10. Learn a backflip: No
11. Ski Silverton Mountain: COMPLETED, Got arrested on my birthday
    
12. Ski Monte Cristo in Little Cottonwood Canyon: No
13. Film one or two short ski mountaineering films w/Christian: No
14. Call in sick to work at least once for a weekday storm dump of 15 inches+: COMPLETED
15. Ascend all 3 pitches of Malan's Waterfall: No
16. Solo Willard Peak ice drainage at least 3 times: No
17. Take an ice climbing trip to Ouray, CO: COMPLETED
18. Find a super hot Backcountry Babe to date: No

Ok so let's look into why I didn't accomplish some of these goals:

• I didn't get my vertical footage goal due to my job as a ski buddy with Dakota. I never got him to ski more than 10,000 feet per day (more than 5 runs).
  
• Any goal that I had with Christian became an extreme challenge due to Christian returning to school and having a baby.
  
• I never did learn a backflip because I just forgot about the goal.
  
• I never did get to ski Monte Cristo as I never got up to Superior this year. Montes Cristo is the true summit to Superior and it's easiest to do those two in the same trip.
• After my ice climbing trip to Ouray, I focused more on skiing and I didn't have any luck with weather as it was a really warm winter causing the ice at lower elevations to not form up as usual.
• And I didn't get that super hot backcountry babe to date cause I didn't really care for that goal. Maybe things will change this next year.

INJURIES:

So this year seemed to be the year of injuries for me. I couldn't believe how one injury would happen right after I healed from another one. Let's look at the damage I had:

1. Torn meniscus left knee - Caught my inside ski on the top of a mogul
   
2. Subluxed left shoulder - Cliff drop into really dense deep snow
   
3. Split lip and chin - Hit a patch of ice at high speeds as I initiated a turn = wipeout
   
4. Sprained right knee - Poor technique when exhausted on a bumped out technical run
5. Hairline fracture right fibula - Bad cliff drop onto a mogul
   
6. Sprained left thumb - Dakota ran into me while stopped and took out my legs
7. Sprained right ankle - I have no idea what happened
8. Broken ribs, 7th and 8th on left side - Carbon fiber ski pole to the ribs at high speed

Yeah I got a little beat up this year. Hopefully I will have better luck this next season. Plus I'm going to make sure that I workout during the season, do a lot of yoga, and stretching to stay healthy.

A really cool highlite of the winter was joining the Icelantic Ski Promotion Team. I love skiing so much and have really wanted to get involved in the industry. This has given me a taste of that and really doesn't seem like work at all. I enjoy working the demos and spreading the word about the skis. As long as I am not required to help out with demos on the really good snow days, I'll be good.

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

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

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.

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