This was my second trip out to the Ruby Mountains in Nevada and it made me wonder why I don’t get out there more often. It is about a 3.5 hour drive from SLC and the range itself is quite a bit like the Wasatch, except I think it has more steep skiing potential. Like the Wasatch, the Rubies are a desert mountain range, so light, dry snow is the norm and there seems to be quite a bit of it.
The Rubies are located just outside of Elko, Nevada, which started life as a railroad town, then turned to ranching and mining. Perhaps because of the ranching, Elko has a strong Basque culture (sheep herders) which is reflected in the many Basque restaurants that specialize in “family style” dining, a euphemism for more meat than you could possibly eat. The Ruby Mountains were named after the garnets that were found in the area. Continue reading ‘Ruby Mountains, NV Trip Report’
When skiing around with a new group of friends on an extra deep powder day, the topic always turns to “What’s the deepest snow you have ever skied?” For me, it was an outing to the Ruby Mountains in Nevada with Mark Holbrook the late 1990′s.
Following a tip that there was an incredible unskied couloir right off the road, we drove from Salt Lake City to Elko, spent the night and easily found the couloir the next day. (We later found out it had not only been skied many times, but was named “Terminal Cancer.”) It had snowed a bit the day before, but was only about 6″ deep on the initial apron. As we got higher into the chute, the walls from the side had sluffed all of their snow into the narrow gully such that it got deeper with every step. About halfway up the chute we wallowing in thigh deep powder and kept thinking it couldn’t get any deeper, but it did.
As we had driven all the way just for this chute and were within 500′ of the top, we kept going, but it meant we had to break out the shovels and trench our way up the couloir. At the point I took this photo, the snow was about 60″ deep and probably in the 5-6% density range. Pure fluff!
The skiing down was surreal. We were worried about hitting the trench, but the snow sluffed and filled it all in so we didn’t even feel it. The only time you could see anything was for a moment in between turns, then you’d sink back in, not just for a face-shot, but to be completely submerged. We were so deep in the snow that we couldn’t go very fast, which led to a dreamy slo-mo descent down the orange-lichen lined walls of Terminal Cancer.
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