Mt. Ogden

The first dawn patrol of the season was a rewarding one. Beautiful views, finally some powder, and a beautiful summit bagged. I met up with new friend Doug at 6:30am at the Snowbasin parking lot. Fortunately, he had an extra pair of skis for me to borrow since my skis are down in Salt Lake getting remounted. Since it snowed 5 inches on Monday, the first time in a while, the plan was to get up high and check out how well the new snow was bonding with the nasty death crust from before.

Since the only place where there is enough snow is still Snowbasin, we decided to poach on their manmade snow again in order to get up into some of the higher bowls where the lifts don't go. The snowguns were on in full force and they just happened to be out route access. We were both caked with a fine snowmist for the first 1000 vertical feet or so. It's an interesting feeling. Makes you feel like your walking through a humidifier, sweating, freezing, and drooling on yourself all at the same time. We watched the sunrise as we skinned up. It did not disappoint.

Alpenglow on Mt. Ogden, where we'd be on top of in another hour and a half.







My favorite photo of the day.



As we got higher, we decided to check out the main bowl between Mt. Ogden and the Needles. We dug a few handpits and decided to proceed to the pass that's just left of the photo above. We were treated with great views of Ogden and Malan's Basin from just over 9100 feet.



Since we were only another 400 vertical feet from the summit of Mt. Ogden we decided to bag the peak. Here's Mt. Ogden's west face seen from the pass.



And a look back to the Needles. We skied the bowl in the foreground back down.



A quick skin up the backside and then about 50 vertical feet of scrambling/booting led us to the summit. The last few feet were fun and exposed, climbing along a ridge with a couple hundred foot drop off to the east. Sorry I forgot to take that photo. But we got this one of me on top.



And then it was time for our near 3200' decent. We found some crust and some hardpack, but most importantly, we found some powder! It's been over a month since I've felt this stuff under my skis.



Looking back at my line with Mt. Ogden behind.



Doug skis a different line after digging a quick snowpit.



Looking back at Mt. Ogden. We skied the main bowl to the left of the peak and then connected up with the groomers back down to the car. Definitely a beautiful day to be out. Storms are coming this weekend!