Between warm temps, rain, sun, fog, flat light and crazy winds, it is getting hard to find good quality snow in the Wasatch lately. Thinking that The Sliver in upper Hogum Fork was probably no worse than anywhere else, we made the long trek in just for the hell of it the other day. Continue reading ‘Skinning the Sliver’
Archive for the 'current conditions' Category
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After torrential rain to 11,000′, then a deep freeze, then three weeks of little to no snow and high winds, you’d think the Wasatch BC would be toast, but it has been surprisingly good. The south faces are corning up and the ice crust is breaking down. The ridgelines are still skating rinks, but there’s some excellent recrystalized powder in mid elevation, sheltered slopes. The wild card is that you can go from creamy snow to glaze ice in one turn with almost no warning, but aside from that, the BC is fun and stable. That said… MORE SNOW PLEASE! Continue reading ‘Wasatch Conditions – Jan 30′
Have I mentioned what a great season the Wasatch has been having? We haven’t had any significant amounts of new snow for two weeks, but there is still some excellent powder to be had. The 4-6″ trace we had on Sunday (a virtual dump by CO standards) freshened things up a bit, but was so light that you could still feel the bottom. Shame.
One of the best moments of the last few days was getting a chance to tour with George Lowe who was visiting from Golden, Colorado. Due to our large group (six) and George’s flight, we didn’t actually get a chance to make turns together, but it was still fun just to be out in the mountains with such a legend. I usually don’t pay much attention to who did the first ascent of any particular route, but there is something about George Lowe routes that always makes me think how exciting it must have been to be the first person up mega classics like Moonlight Buttress, Lowe Route in LCC, Lowe Route in Lone Peak, the Dorsal Fin in LCC and many others. Any one of those would be a climb of a lifetime for most people, but George happened to be the right guy at the right time and stacked up hundreds of them, to the point that he didn’t get around to naming them, and thus the proliferation of “Lowe Routes” all around the American West. Continue reading ‘Touring with George Lowe & Tidbits’
Now that the snowpack has filled in to about the 6,500′, the Wasatch backcountry is officially open for the season. This is good in many ways, but one of the biggest benefits is that a low elevation snowpack means that many of the bigger lines are now skiable and most importantly, there are many, many more options available than just Cardiac/Silver & Days.
I brought out my Contour POV camera today, but between the weather being kind of greybird and me pointing it too far towards my feet (you get a sore neck just reviewing it – “Look up! Look up!”) the only worthwhile shots came at the Coalpit rappel/downclimb. I’ve heard a few people say they have seen this filled in enough to ski through, but I have always done some sort of downclimbing or a handline rappel. There are ropes fixed all over this section in various states of decay. Most of the time you can get through without them, but in low snow conditions they add a nice bit of security. Continue reading ‘Coalpit Hand Rappel’
Gushing rain in biblical proportions all the way up to 7,500′ at night. Grim. Continue reading ‘Wasatch Tweet’
Yehaw! The WWW (Wonderful World of Wasatch) was surprisingly good today and if conditions remain stable, should be a blast this weekend. About 4″ of graupel fell in the last day or so and in sheltered areas it was still Sponge-Bob bouncy powder, but in wind exposed areas it was buffed as smooth and creamy as a trophy wife’s left butt cheek. Easy trailbreaking, very few people and a wide variety of fun, stable conditions. Hard to go wrong. Continue reading ‘Wasatch BC Tweet’
I’ve updated my Wasatch early season opinion from “Pretty good” to “Best in memory.” I may not have the best memory, but I’ve been out three out of the last four days and haven’t hit a rock except when I was trying to. It is still bony below 7,500′ (approx base of Snowbird), but up high, especially on north facing slopes, it is as good as almost anytime last year. The resorts are all open and seem to be charging away as well.
One of the things that makes this season so good is that the snow has come in in classic Wasatch style – lots of medium sized storms that set up nicely, then get a new layer of refresh on it a day later. The big 100″ storms are impressive, but tend to shut everything down, have high avalanche danger and the skiing is only good for a day or so before it sets up. What makes the Wasatch so good is a pattern of constant refresh, which is what we have had so far this year (fingers crossed in case I jinx it). Continue reading ‘November Pow Update’
A few photos from last Saturday in the Central Wasatch. Once you got high enough and on the right aspect, the skiing was fantastic. Continue reading ‘Wasatch Photos – Nov 13′
I know, a few days ago I said I wasn’t in a rush to get out, but then it continued to dump snow and Polly reminded me that we missed out on the early turns last year and then had to wait another four weeks until it snowed again. One of the hardest parts about getting out for the first time is deciding which skis are going to be sacrificed to the rock gods and this season my beloved 2006 Chugoris (aka “Chugs”) took one for the team, although the damage was surprisingly light.
We headed up to one of my favorite little high, sheltered, windloaded, northfacing snow traps which looked totally filled in. I decided to boot up to get a feel for the early season snowpack and was glad I did as there were some thigh-deep spots which had a chunky slab on top of a 3″ deep graupel layer. Continue reading ‘First Day of the 2009/10 Season’
