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

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

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