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.

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