Archive for January, 2009
Top 10 in 10 – The Hypodermic Needle
#7 – The Hypodermic Needle (aka The Needle) The Hypodermic Needle is such a striking, fantastic, obvious couloir that if anyone ever says “I was up at Alta/Snowbird today and saw this amazing looking chute…” there is a 99.9% chance they are talking about The Hypodermic Needle. If you are into chute skiing, one glance […]
Top 10 in 10 – NE Couloir of Lone Peak
#6 – NE Couloir of Lone Peak. Yow! What a spectacular line! If the NE Couloir of Lone Peak were closer to civilization it would be skied on a daily basis. But, as it is, the King of Couloirs is guarded by a long approach and today it looked like we were probably the first people […]
Top 10 in 10 – Coalpit
#5 – Coalpit Headwall The Coalpit Headwall has a lot going for it – it is north facing (softest of the soft), huge, has a fairly moderate angle, has tons of variety and more often than not, some portion of it will have good skiing. There are many ways to approach it, all involving pain […]
Top 10 in 10 – NW Couloir of the Pfiefferhorn
#4 – NW Couloir of the Pfiefferhorn The Pfiefferhorn is the Wasatch’s version of Switzerland’s famous Matterhorn peak. Like the Matterhorn, the Pfieff is triangular, sharp, jagged and can be seen from all around the mountain range. In a splendid act of geological creation, it has a splitter couloir that runs right from the summit all […]
Top 10 in 10 – Stairs Gulch
#3 – Stairs Gulch Although Stairs Gulch in Big Cottonwood Canyon is a major classic, I’ve only skied it a few times in the last fifteen years as it is so big, dark and scary. Stairs has a long history of fatalities and I’d suspect that far more accidents have happened there than any other couloir in […]
Top 10 in 10 – Argenta
#2 – Argenta The Chute du Jour this morning for the Top 10 in 10 quest was Argenta in Big Cottonwood Canyon. This is a perennial Dawn Patrol favorite as it is so close to the road that the asphalt often gets covered, or at least dusted when Argenta avalanches, plus it has a huge variety […]
Wasatch Top 10 in 10 – The Y Couloir
As a compulsive list keeper, I’ve had a Post-It note stuck to my monitor for a few years that said “Wasatch Top 10 in 10.” The idea is/was to rack up a bunch of Wasatch classic ski descents back-to-back in ten days in a chute skiing feeding frenzy. The problem has always been that I […]
Return of the Chuting Spree – Win a Mountain Hardwear Tent!
Between holidays, computer crashes and the excitment of a new ski season starting, the Chuting Spree contest was overwhelmed and needed to take a break… but now it is back and better than ever with a Mountain Hardwear tent as a prize! Mountain Hardwear is my #1 skiing enabler and I have spent many happy hours […]
Faith Base Skinning
While skinning up a steep, exposed slope today in a total white-out, it occurred to me that we were engaging in Faith Based Skinning. Faith Based Skinning (FBS) is when you feel nervous about a slope, but continue on anyway because, well, nothing bad has happened yet. This is not such a great idea. I consider snowpacks […]
PNW Practices Random Acts of Avalanche Destruction
One of the defining moments in my life (Ski Career 1.0) was sitting in a cabin at Alpental outside of Seattle watching it rain so hard that the windows looked like a braided river crossing. It was the middle of February and not only were the slopes barren mounds of mud, but there were gushing […]
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