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!

Clouds and Wind

Headed out for a little afternoon tour again today. A storm was supposed to roll through so I thought I'd sneak up and do some more poking around in the snow before it fell. I wasn't moving so fast today. I felt a little tired after touring Sunday, running 6 miles of hills on Monday and then going climbing afterwards. We'll see how the legs feel tomorrow!

I was back at Snowbasin again since that's really the only place for me to go touring around Ogden right now. Here's looking over at De Moisy Peak after skinning up 2200 feet. It was very windy today. I almost got knocked over a few times.



I look like a turtle here.



A couple chutes off of De Moisy that I'd like to ski this winter.



About three weeks ago, I skinned up here and stopped for lunch. Unfortunately I left my water bottle. Fortunately for me it was still laying around. Probably didn't hurt that it was frozen in place.



I dug a snow pit up high in Middle Bowl and found a scary snowpack. Only about 45 cms deep. 4cm thick crust, then 1cm of facets, then another crust (3cms thick), and then 35 cms of facets and depth hoar. Exactly what I DON'T like to see when I dig a pit. Once we get enough snow, that sucker is probably going to avalanche to ground.

Portraits of Solitude

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful day. I headed out this afternoon for a quick skin up at Snowbasin. Thankfully there was a bit of manmade snow that they'd been blowing, so I was able to get some turns in since Utah has been so warm and dry for the last couple weeks. Anyway, here's a few photos from the day.

Hooray! I can ski from the parking lot again!



Heading on up.



Clouds and someone else's tracks on the way up.






And our lovely snowpack off of the groomed trails. 35cms deep. Lots of crusts and lots of facets. Oh goody.

An Offering

In an attempt to appease the snow gods and show them that, yes, I am ready for the snow to come in full force - to show them that I am ready to sweat for it - I offer this collection of trailbreaking/skinning up photos. Please let it snow soon.

East meets West

Well the weather has been nothing less than interesting for the past two weeks. Almost 50" of new snow in two days down in the Cottonwood Canyons was followed by a few more inches of snow. Then the weather took a break for a few days while the temperature rose and the next storm system moved in. However, this time the freezing level hit the ceiling, rising all the way up to 9500 feet and raining on all of that delicious coldsmoke powder and turning the whole thing into an Ontario-esque ice skating rink. At least mountain weather is never boring (unless you live in Southern California).

I took a drive by Snowbasin, on the back side of Mt. Ogden, the other day and noticed that the upper bowls had good snow coverage. Also, thanks to their snowmaking, it was possible to start skinning from basically the parking lot at 6500 feet.



Well, I knew that it was going to be crusty and icy up there, but I convinced my room mate to come have a look with me. I figured if nothing else it would be good training. The past few days have had the temperature way above normal and the freezing levels have been crazy high, above 10,500 feet. I figured we'd encounter stout crusts in the morning which would soften into something soft or mushy as the day progressed. Boy was I wrong. That snow was hard as hell all day! Here's where we started skinning.



Yours truly lovin' the arm shot.



Joshua skinning on up on the only soft snow we found the whole day. Too bad it was only 3 inches deep here.



Here's Chris skinning up with the tail end of the Bear River Range in the background.



Initially the plan was to skin up to a saddle next to the summit of Mt. Ogden and ski the southeast facing bowl that drops down. However, the higher we got the more iced over everything was. In fact the snow was shimmering and glazed over. Not a good sight to see when you're about to ski. But the views were awesome!





So we changed our plans and headed towards the Needles Lodge, a sheik lodge/restaurant located at about 8700 feet. The last couple hundred feet to the lodge involved some of the diciest, scariest skinning I've ever done. It was basically pure ice. So we took a long lunch and waited around for a while to let the snow/ice soften up. Well, eventually it did, but only the top 2 millimeters. Sweet. We probably would've had to wait another two hours for that snow to really soften up. Crazy.

Here's a view from the Lodge.



The boys ready to slay or be slain by some Icy Death.



Our tracks in the "soft" snow section.



Chris in deep. Not.



Despite the icy conditions, it was a great day. We were able to skin and ski right back to the car for 2200 vertical feet of descent. Not bad considering the snowline was really 1000 feet above where we started. It was a beautiful day to be in the mountains with fantastic views and great weather. Now if we could just have another 40 + inches sans rain please?

Hooray for Snow!

Well, this past week has been pretty awesome. Obama won the election, I passed my OEC course, and it snowed 45" in two days in the Cottonwood Canyons down by Salt Lake! What more could a boy ask for? I would've liked to have been able to get down out to ski on Wednesday or Thursday, but I had to stay focused on my exams for those days. So, I headed out yesterday, Saturday, to go get some turns in around Brighton in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

I went with my roommate Chris, who, unbeknowst to me, invited quite a few of his friends along as well. There ended up being eleven of us total going backcountry skiing. Too many people for my taste, but we still had a good time. After the storm finished on Wednesday things stayed fairly cold through Thursday and then got really warm on Friday which created a thick sun crust on anything south facing. So we headed for some north facing openings where we could hopefully find some preserved powder. Here's a view from skinning about half way up where we first dropped in.



We found a great opening with lovely powder. Although it wasn't as deep as I would've hoped, it was still great to be skiing powder again with a base below it. That 45" had settled fast with the high temps. Here's some of the crew climbing up behind me as I break trail.



Here's a look at a fun little opening that we skied. Great to be in winter again. Absolutely my favorite time of year.



Unfortunately after this photo my camera batteries died so I didn't get anymore photos of the incredible views higher up or of anyone skiing the pow. But take my word for it, it was silky smooth! After playing around in this area for a bit, half the people headed down while half of us skinned up to the top of a Preston Peak, a 10, 315 foot tree covered peak with some rad skiing off of it once it gets a little more snow coverage. Anyway, it was great to be on top of my first Wasatch summit on skis! We skied out through glades and some of the trail cuts at Brighton finding heavy and wet snow with the rising temps. However, the snow was soft and the turns were still great. So nice to be back on skis and not hit any rocks. More snow is in the forecast for the week!