Amazing Day

Pardon my french, but today was the shit. One of those perfect days in the mountains. Bluebird day, good partners, exploring new and awesome terrain, a bit of adventure, some bushwacking, great snow and good stability. Days like this don't happen all the time, but when they do, all feels right in the world.

The last two weekends had been spent down in the mountains around Salt Lake City. So, I wanted to stay closer to home this weekend and was looking forward to exploring some new terrain in my local mountains. I'd been looking on the topo maps a bit lately and there seemed to be good potential in an area called Mill Canyon just north of Ben Lomond. I called my friend Doug to see if he was in for some exploration and, as he hadn't been there either, he readily agreed. I met him and his wife, Katie, this morning and we began our ascent alongside a beautiful creek...



with cool trees...



and even a bit of adventure right from the start.



Mill Canyon lies just on the other side of the forested hills on the right hand side of the photo.



We skinned our way up through mandatory alders, and then on up through wonderfully spaced pines and eventually gained the ridge of the northern side of Black Canyon.



Fortunately for us, there was another party that came up a different way to the ridgetop. And as they were heading in the same direction as we were, they had kindly laid a nice skin track for us to follow up the ridge.

Looking into Black Canyon from where we gained the ridge.



Doug skinning up with James Peak in the background. James Peak is part of Powder Mountain where I work. The resort lies on the other side of James and the adjacent mountains.




We worked our way up the ridge and were all impressed by the terrain and potential that this area had. We're definitely coming back and hopefully for longer. The only downside to the fantastic day was that my camera died half way through the day. So. I don't have any photos of the awesome terrain up high and the fantastic skiing on the way down. Needless to say, the powder was excellent. Fast and super fun with our skis penetrating 6-8 inches deep. Stability was great too as we were able to ski some steeper pitches with no observable instabilities. Doug took some video and photos, so hopefully I'll be able to add some of those to the blog once I get them. Amazing day though. Seriously I will be back to this place. So much great potential so close to home. I'm definitely feeling blessed.

Some Photos

Just thought I'd share a couple photos that I took about a week and a half ago when I was down skiing in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

Winter Returns

The last two weeks we've been having a bit of a dry spell here in Utah. In fact, a huge high pressure system has dominated almost the whole west coast from San Diego to near Alaska. Translation: Ain't nobody gettin' snow over here. Well, that has all changed quite recently. A storm system rattled through southern California and made it's way up to us. Early in the week this storm looked like it would not be a biggy. Maybe 6 inches out of the whole thing. Well, know that it's here it's looking like its going to drop 30+ inches. Can't say no to that. As of this morning, Powder Mountain was up to 19" and it snowed all day and it's supposed to continue through the night and tomorrow. Glad winter is back. That's what I gotta say.

I headed down to Salt Lake today to do some touring in Big Cottonwood Canyon with Bruce, his wife Susie, and a few of their other friends. I didn't see a whole lot of Bruce's friends, because (1) they were really fast and (2) I was tagging along with Bruce to do field work with him. He's the director of the Utah Avalanche Center and a pretty cool guy to get to follow around. It was a beautiful winter day. Here's a few photos from it.

Drooping Aspen trees on the skin up.



Bruce looking for any new avalanche activity in Monitor Bowl, on the Park City/Big Cottonwood Canyon Ridgeline.



Sun. Snow. Trees. Winter.



Susie enjoying the pow.

Cutler Ridge Revisited

This last week has been a pretty good week snowfall wise. Monday and Tuesday storm totals were 20 inches and we got another 5 inches on Thursday night. The only bummer was that Wednesday temps sky rocketed and turned all that beautiful pow into a wet base instead of delicious deep powder. Oh well. I headed back to Cutler Ridge this Saturday. It was mostly sunny with some cool patches of clouds in the area that made for some cool looking vistas.



I liked this lonely tree.



The views were lovely on the way up.



And I kicked off a couple of cornices to see how sensitive they were. They were hard, but failed withing two or three good kicks.



I ended up meeting up with two guys, Chris and Kevin, higher up on the ridge that I new were out touring in the area. So, after checking out the snowpack and deciding on a plan, we dropped in to find 3-4 inches of creamy fast powder on top of a supportable base. Chris drops in.



And makes nice turns a little lower down.



It was a great day to be out in the mountains and see what the last week's weather had done to the snowpack. It is certainly gaining strength, but there are still spots out there where if you triggered something it would be really bad. So we chose to play it safe. There's no snow in the forecast for the next week as a big high pressure system sits over Utah. This should help to continue strengthening the snowpack as it will be quite warm. We might even have a mid-January corn cycle by next weekend.

Cutler Ridge

Happy New Year everyone! It's been a bit since I've blogged. I was out of town for the holidays and have since started my new job and it's been pretty busy lately, but I'm loving it. I'm on skis everyday and get to watch the sunrise and set on the beautiful Wasatch. It's definitely a great way to start and end the day. We got a decent bit of snow on Friday night. Storm totals were 8-9 inches, so after being a good boy and running errands that needed to get done on Saturday (I did manange to sneak a few turns in at the end of the day), it was time to head out to the mountains on foot this lovely Sunday morning.

While lift skiing can certainly be fun on a powder day, it does leave me a bit unsatisfied at times since I've become a powder snob after living in Canada. Needless to say, it felt great to throw the skins on the skis, breathe the crisp mountain air (it was -12F/-24C at the parking lot today), step into my Dynafits and skin uphill. Today we met at 7am to ski some lines off of Cutler Ridge, a broad ridge that descends off the northeast side of Ben Lomond, the monarch of the Northern Wasatch. Chris (my roommate) and I met up with my friend Doug and a couple of his buddies, Aaron, Chad, and Dave (?). Sorry bad with names. As we skinned up...



We watched the sun come up.



The brisk morning air refroze to my face as I exhaled. Even though it was cold, I was so glad to be hiking for turns.



Doug had to leave a little earlier than us so he headed back down around 8200'. The rest of skinned up a couple hundred more vertical feet. Cutler Ridge faces northeast, but there are shots to the south and north that you can take. This latest storm brought in some potent winds from the northwest, so the best snow was actually on the SE slopes.

Here's Aaron dropping a knee in the pow.



And a great view over to mighty Willard Peak.



Since we chose a southeast facing shot we had to do a little bit of traversing to get back to Cutler Ridge proper. After regaining the ridge, we tried to hug the south side of it for the best snow. Here's Dave enjoying a nice section lower down the ridge.



And Aaron doing his tele thing.



Funny thing about today was that out of the six of us touring, five were engineers or soon to be engineers and they were all on tele skis. I was the lone none engineer and the only person on an AT setup, specifically Dynafits, the lightest and greatest binding ever made. I like to think that that makes me smarter than the engineers :)