Andrew McLean
Andrew McLean lives in Park City, Utah and is a gear designer, writer, photographer, ski mountaineer, climber, Mountain Unicycle rider and father of two very loud little girls.
Andrew McLean's Latest Posts
Top 10 in 10 – Little Pine Couloir
#9 – Little Pine Couloir I’ve heard there are over 32 slide paths that hit the Little Cottonwood road, and much to UDOT’s dismay, one person’s slidepath is another person’s idea of an excellent ski descent. As you drive up the LCC road towards Alta, the big south facing guns stack up one after another […]
Top 10 in 10 – Lisa Falls
#8 – Lisa Falls With a vertical drop of 5,000′, Lisa Falls is the biggest of all the magnificent south facing couloirs that line Little Cottonwood Canyon. When I first skied it roughly fifteen years ago in knee-deep sub 5% powder on a clear, sunny day, it was such an incredible experience that it sold […]
Chuting Spree Clue #1 – Mountain Hardwear Tent!
Follow five weekly clues and be the first to correctly identify where the tent is hidden to win a Mountain Hardwear tent of your choice! Click here for the Chuting Spree Mountain Hardwear Tent contest rules. Clue: In 1995, after numerous attempts by many strong parties, two skiers from this CONTINENT laid first tracks down this twelve-thousand, nine-hundred […]
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 […]
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