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 :)

Peak 9269

Yesterday my friend Jeff and I headed down to Big Cottonwood Canyon outside of Salt Lake City for some backcountry skiing. Since we had no snow before, and we've gotten quite a bit in the last few days, avalanche danger is considerable. Our current snowpack is interesting up in Ogden and it's downright scary in Salt Lake. So, with that in mind, the plan was to play it conservative and see what we could find.

We headed to an area called Mill D which has a lot of mellower, treed terrain that is great to play in when avalanche conditions are unstable. We skinned up through beautiful Aspen trees...



...and Jeff instantly became a convert to the Dynafit clan after his first day touring on these incredibly light bindings.



Then we decided to take a quick lap once we gained a little ridge.



After a quick bite to eat we headed back up for more but this time worked our way up higher following someone's beautifully placed skin track that lead through gorgeous aspen glades...



...then on up to moderately angled alpine terrain to the summit of Peak 9269. Jeff skins the last few vertical feet to the summit.



The boys on top. It was blustery up here. The temperature was probably -10F with the wind chill. We didn't stay long.



The powder was windbuffed and some areas were crossloaded, but there wasn't enough of a pitch for anything to move. Minor cracking was observed while skiing but only on the top 1 centimeter where a slight wind crust had formed. We had great windbuffed powder turns on the descent. Here I am enjoying some of the goods on the upper portion of the peak.



And Jeff getting great early season turns lower down.



I have a couple videos from the day that I've loaded via YouTube. Hopefully everyone will like this format better as it allows you to blow up the video to full screen.

Jeff testing out how well his Dynafits handle the Pow.



And me skiing down the middle section of Peak 9269. Jeff zoomed his camera while recording so that's why it looks like the picture jumps a couple times.



Another fantastic day out in the backcountry.

Yeah for Powder

Well, we're finally getting some snow. It's snowed well over a foot in the mountains around Ogden, probably close to 15 or 16" as of today and a few more inches are expected for tomorrow/Tuesday and then more snow later in the week. Praise Jesus. I did a little touring around Snowbasin yesterday and then headed up to Powder Mountain later in the afternoon. Skinned up through 10-12" of light fluffy goodness at Powder, caught the sunset over the Salt Lake...



...and then made some lovely turns in 10 inches of Utah pow.



Today I headed up to Logan, Utah, which is about 70 miles north of Ogden. Simon and I headed to Beaver Mountain, a local ski hill, that's not open yet and thought we'd poach on some of their snow. There was 12" in the parking lot and 16" higher up. It wasn't as light as I'd hoped, so that face shots weren't as plentiful as you'd expect, but it was still durn good.

A composition I liked.



Sun and fresh snow.



Simon's first turns of the year.






And a video of me enjoying the goodness.

Finally

"A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR SNOW AND STRONG WINDS REMAINS IN EFFECT
UNTIL 5 PM MST SUNDAY.

THIS WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE VALLEYS OF NORTHWEST UTAH
INCLUDING THE WASATCH FRONT AND ALL THE NORTHERN MOUNTAINS.

TOTAL SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS 3 TO 6 INCHES ARE EXPECTED IN THE
VALLEYS WITH UP TO 8 INCHES ON THE BENCH AREAS AND HIGHER
VALLEYS. TOTAL SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 16 TO 24 INCHES ARE
EXPECTED IN THE MOUNTAINS BY LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON."

Now lets see if it comes true.

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.