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.

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

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