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

Last Day Skiing with Dakota

Today was my last day taking Dakota out skiing: It was a day of mixed feelings. On one side I was excited to have future Saturdays to myself. On the other hand I wouldn't be spending time with an individual that I've grown to know, taught how to ski, taught how to act in social scenes, and have built a relationship with.

The day started out really well. After a warm up run, Dakota wanted to charge the whole mountain. He asked if we could go ski a black diamond run off of Wilbere. That's a big step for Dakota. He skied the run once about two weeks prior. As we made our way over to the other side of the mountain, I could see Dakota's complexion and energy change. We drop into the run and it all fell apart. The sun had not yet warmed up the snow as the whole run was a sheet of ice. Dakota immediately started to tense up and over pressure his edges. On Dakota's third turn he lost his edge, fell to his side, and started to slide down the run, accelerating and screaming for help. I saw it coming and was ready to help. I skied up to him and stopped his "death slide."

Little Dakota was now freaked out and him being sick didn't help. I gave Dakota a little room to stand back up. As he stood up he let his skis start to move downhill. I could see the crash that was about to ensue in slow motion. I tried to get out of the way but my skis were pointed the wrong way. BOOM!!! Dakota took out my legs and the first thing I landed on happened to be my left thumb. CRUNCH!!! Ok well all I could say was "OWWWWWWW"!!!!! I could see Dakota's energy and health waning quickly. I decided that we were going to be done skiing for the day. Dakota was so upset because he wanted to ski hard so that we could go swimming as a reward for skiing hard. As we got back to the Lodge, Dakota was really upset and disappointed, that it was great to see his face when I said that we could go swimming, he lit up. I told him that being in the warm pool and hot tub would help him feel better and I didn't want him to have a disappointing last day with me.

My experience was one that tested my discipline, commitment, and patience. There were days that I had to forgo powder, skiing with friends, and Saturday morning sleeping in time. I kept telling myself that I was building up my karma points and that I would be repaid with interest.

Dakota taking it easy after swimming


The last car ride

Jackson Hole Trip #2

Alright we made it out to Jackson Hole once again.

We arrived two days after the snow, but managed to get some good turns in on the Headwall during the morning on the first day. Unfortunately that was the highlite of my trip. I dropped Corbet's Couloir again: twice. I brutalized it the first drop. On the second day, I hip checked going into it, recovered for a bit, and then washed my tails out going down as I still had too much weight in the back seat. That really pissed me off as I really wanted to stick Corbet's. I did visit the Doug Coombs Cave afterwards and caught my breath. Enjoy the shots.

Jared waiting on top of the Headwall



Katie, Trevor, and my finger hiking up to the Headwall



Jared lining up a small drop on the Headwall


Corbet's Couloir


The Doug Coombs Cave


More Cave


The tight entrance which I had to duck


Looking out at the tram before I jumped the drop


Looking back up at Corbet's right entrance

Skiing With Terry

Terry, the other ski buddy, and I finally got back out for a day without the kids. We had a pretty fun time, and it was good warm up session for Jackson Hole.

Enjoy the pics.

Twins Peaks


Riding up Little Cloud Chair


My "Go-to" skis are bigger than Terry's fat skis

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

My Best Powder Day of the Year

I definitely had an awesome day today. After having a traffic jam heading into Little Cottonwood Canyon, which caused me to be extremely irritable, I eventually had my best ski day of the year. And that has put me into an extremely good, chipper mood.

I could not believe how many people were up at Snowbird. Seriously, half of Salt Lake City must have called in sick to go skiing. My dreams of a desolate Tuesday powder filled resort were smashed. To make it even worse, they all seemed to be in the tram line. There was no way that I could sit in a line and let all this new fresh blower snow get skied out right in front of me. Plus I'm on my sweet Pontoons for the first time and these bad sticks are designed specifically for deep powder steezefests.

Andy and I decided to forgo the tram line, went straight up Peruvian, and then through the tunnel out to Mineral Basin where the sun was poking through. After getting in two runs in some already adulterated snow, we headed back up to go Regulator Johnson. After flying down through that run, our luck changed. We were just getting off of Little Cloud lift low and behold, ski patrol dropped the rope to Road to Provo.

YES!!!!! Only 15 people in front of us on the way to unadulterated powder. "What did you just say Andy?!!?!?!?!?! You have to adjust your sock??!?!?!" So now I'm sitting there waiting on Andy and my legs are just twitching. I'm looking at the powder in front of me, a high priced, very rare commodity, about to be stolen from me, and getting extremely frustrated. That's it, I'm invoking the first rule of powder days:

1. "There are no friends on a powder day."

So I told him I'd meet him down at the first loll, and skated off. Luck hit me again: Everyone in front of me was traversing out as far as they could, and those right in front of me were getting stuck in the deep snow piled thigh high on the usually groomed cat track. This is my sign. I couldn't believe that people where going out far for the lower angle lines. I stopped after about 100 yards, spotted an open, untouched line, and made ready.

I drop onto a 40 degree slope and straightline it for a bit to gain speed. Now that I've opened it up it's time to turn. Turn one: face shot, I smile. Turn two: huge face shot, over my head and into my throat. I'm choking. AWESOME!!!! The face shots were now all coming in over my head. I had to hold my breath and try to keep my mouth closed while the biggest smile of my life kept sneaking through. This is the first time that I've been choked and blinded from face shots. Instant euphoria.

That single run made my entire day and it was only the fourth run of the day.

Oh by the way, these powder skis are awesome! I felt like I was cheating. People around me were tip diving and getting stuck. I was floating through all of it with my rockered tips floating high, keeping me upright.

We really killed it today. I hit a couple of cliffs, got a ton of face shots, got reckless, got exhausted, and just slayed the powder. Here are a few shots from the day.

Cliff Drop (Andy sucks with a camera and zoomed in way too far to see the rest of the cliff, which was only about a 10 footer)


Andy's self portrait of his powder stokeage


A perfect snowflake on my glove: Life is good

Author's Side Note

I have done a massive "bring ya up to speed" with my postings. There are a total of 5 new posts not counting this. The following are the new posts:

1. Silverton Mountain Charges Update
2. Jackson Hole Super Weekend
   
3. Kessler West Couloir Tour
4. New Look
5. Silverton Mountain Ski Trip: Not So Happy Birthday
   

Silverton Mountain Charges Update

Things have finally come together. Having Clint on the trip paid off. Because he is in the Air Force, we were able to have free legal representation by a JAG (Judge Advocate General) in our dealings with San Juan County.

The Captain spoke with the San Juan County DA and helped us out. The DA agreed to not fine us or require to appear in court if we plead guilty to a "skiing out of bounds" petty offense and we'd only have to pay $26 each to cover the filing fees.

The petty offense will be on a permanent record, but does not constitute as a criminal record. This will not affect my job status, therefore, due to the convenience the bargain allows, I will be pleading guilty. What a joke of an incident. Thank goodness it's over.

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