Monte Cristo Directissimo 4/28

The other day when I was up on the summit of Superior I saw a few local wasatch skiers head down Monte Cristo and into the direcctissimo line. This line had been on my hit list for a while and I knew if I wanted to ski it this season I should get on it soon. A few days later I was headed back up the ridge of Superior with my friend Charlie, a rope, and plans to ski the direct. We once again made good time on the approach, enjoying great morning views of the Wasatch mountains and also the lack of people heading up Superior. Maybe it had something to do with being closing day at Alta or the early start, but we didn't see anybody else from start to the finish, a rare thing for spring days in this area. We moved past the summit of Superior along the ridge to Monte Cristo. It was still early enough to ski the headwall of Monte Cristo, a southeast facing snowfield hanging on the side of cliffs to skiers right that was made a classic through "edge of the world" photographs.

Gaining Cardiff Pass

On the way up Superior ridge

Monte Cristo Headwall (Picture taken the other day)

The headwall ended up having perfect skiing. We timed it just right to take advantage of soft playful snow but not too soft to make wet slides an issue. After enjoying some great skiing down the headwall, the line curves skiers right down a chute. This section of the descent is shadowed by the South ridge of Superior and contained a lot of icy debris. We pieced our way through this section and got a few more soft turns before the rappel. On skiers left it's possible to branch out into the line Monte Cristo Gully. I've never skied the line and didn't bother to check it out, but heard it usually holds snow for a while if one wishes to avoid the rappel. However it also avoids the bottom half of a great line and a fun rappel. With the current amount of snow, there was two rappels to get through the cliffs blocking the route. The first rappel anchor is located on the rock face to skiers right, just as the line cliffs out. There was an extremely icy section in the way of this anchor that required a few exposed tricky moves to get by. Thankfully my partner Charlie seemed exited to test it out after I backed away. This first rappel was pretty short, only about 50 feet at most, and brings you to the second main rap, located skiers right on the obvious tree. This one was much, longer, probably around 100 feet with the current amount of snow. Both rappels went smoothly and we were putting our skis back on with more great skiing ahead of us.

Charlie getting some smooth turns on the edge of the world

First Rap

First Rap

Second Rap

 From the bottom of the rappel the line wraps around a small cliff and continues south through the obvious gully. It wraps left and right several times, with the snow riding high up on both sides of the couloir, half pipe style. The skiing through this section was very fun, soft and playful. At a few points near the end it was a bit too soft and made the skiing difficult but it's all part of spring skiing, and much better than the icy debris up top. We kept our eyes out for any potential wet slides coming off the south face but didn't see any activity as we enjoyed the rest of the skiing. At the end of the gully there was one part we had to take off the skis to get around, but other than that we were able to ski right to the road. I'm sure this is going to change in the next week as the river continues to poke its way out of the snow. It was a fun day of skiing and an awesome line I was able to check out.

Skiing down shortly after the rappel

Exiting the gully in some mashed potato snow

GH

Superior South Face 4/25

I had not been up to the summit of superior at all this year, so when my friend Brett asked if I wanted to get up there and ski the south face this week I was excited. We left the valley at 5:30 and were heading up to Cardiff Fork by 6:15. Its always great seeing the sunrise on the Wasatch peaks.The day turned out really well and everything went smoothly  We made it to the summit in about 2 and a half hours thanks to a solid booter going up the east ridge. It was still pretty early so we waited about a half hour on the summit for the snow to soften. From the summit we watched a few others head over to the headwall of Monte Cristo to ski the directissimo line, another descent I've been really wanting to do. After traversing South for about 150 feet, we found our line of choice: a series of gullies that leads into a tighter rock band, back into the open face, through another rock band, and out the apron. We laid down the first tracks on this top section through soft corn snow that stayed consistent for the entire descent. It was early enough in the warm cycle to not have to deal with very much wet debris. Three thousand feet of great spring skiing later we were dished out at the road and were back at our car at 10. Overall a great morning of skiing.

Sunrise from little superior (the previous mornig)

Brett working his way up the ridge

From the summit of Superior

Looking South

Grabbing some lunch while waiting for the snow to soften

Superior skiing down Superior South Face

Looking back up from the road

GH

Northwest Couloir of the Pfeifferhorn 4/19

Ever since I first hiked the Pfeifferhorn shortly after moving to Utah, I've always had the Northwest Couloir in the back of my mind. With stable conditions and "supposedly" solid weather for the morning, Justin and I set out early to ski it. We rolled up to the White Pine Trailhead and were on the trail by around 4. The approach over into Red Pine and up to the lakes went really well and we made good time. After gaining the ridge near No Name Baldy we were able to get a few views of the surrounding Wasatch before the bad weather rolled in. We watched the clouds swallow the Pfeiff and move down to us just in time for the knife's edge traverse.

Views of Box Elder and Utah Lake

Approaching the knifes edge ridge as the clouds rolled in

Justin led the ridge with the one ice-ax we brought and kicked steps for me to follow. I felt a little bit exposed on the ridge without a self-arrest tool, but the snow was stable and none of the moves were difficult. The traverse was much more fun then scary. At the end of this traverse we reached the base of where the Pfeifferhorn jets out from the rock, earning it's nick-name "Little Matterhorn". The standard route goes up the southeast facing snowfields to the summit, but we found ourselves sinking into a lot of deep wind drifted snow and thought it would be safer to stay mostly on the ridge going up from the East. From the start of the knifes-edge ridge to the summit it had been mostly a complete whiteout and we weren't sure if it would be safe to drop the NW couloir with the really poor visibility, since neither of us had skied it before.

Justin leading the way

Weather clearing up on the Pfiefferhorn summit

Fortunately the weather cleared a few minutes after summiting and we were able to get a view of what we were skiing. We threw on our harnesses and got ready for the descent. On most years you can drop right from the summit and ski to the main rappel. However, there was about a 15 foot ice and rock gully about 50 feet down that couldn't be skied. This became a problem for us and our 30 m rope we brought. To get down I lowered Justin to below the gully, rappelled down as far as I could go and did some sketchy downclimbing to get through the gully. Not exactly what I wanted to be doing above a 50 degree chute into a cliff. From the bottom of the gully we enjoyed a few hundred feet of steep skiing in variable snow before inching up to the rap station. The anchors are almost directly about the drop-off on skiers right and can be a little scary to get to. There is another anchor about 40 feet above it on skiers left for those who don't feel comfortable approaching the main rap but not very necessary. Our 30 m rope worked perfectly for the current amount of snow and the rappel went smoothly. From the bottom of the cliff, the route raps around skiers right of some large cliffs and we enjoyed our turns in damp snow down the apron as more clouds rolled in. We skied by many of the awesome lines in Hogum Fork as we made plans for future link-ups. Opting for the exit out of Hogum Fork, we skied for as long as we could and then bushwhacked out for about an hour until we reached the road. The NW Couloir was definitely one of the craziest lines I'd ever skied and inspired me to get on some more technical routes in the future.

The main rappel in the couloir

Skiing out the apron

GH

Holy Mole Couloir 4/17

A big April snowstorm and little time to ski. With papers to write and finals to study for we didn't have very much time to go skiing, but still wanted to get some of the last powder of the season and get a little scare. We decided to go check out Holy Mole, a line running North off of Toledo Peak. After a quick skin up Toledo Bowl, we reached the start of Holy Toledo and continued up the ridge to the first obvious saddle. From here you ski some open trees straight down until you come across a choke that is the only way down through the cliff band. Luckily for us the cruxy steep section was filled in, but still required a committing quick turn to get through. There was a fixed line buried in the snow that can be used to get past this section. Most of the new snow had already slid off this choke so sluffing didn't play a big of a role as we were worried about. Before we started down I was telling Justin that the cliffs "aren't that big". I realized how wrong that was once we got through the choke and could see what we were skiing on top off. The run ends with a fun couloir that dumps you into Cardiff Fork. A quick skin up to Cardiff Pass brought us back over to LCC and we chose to exit through a little chutellete off of Cardiff ridge.

Crappy picture of the choke

Getting powder in the Couloir 

Holy Mole Couloir, with the "not so big cliffs" on the left

Justin getting fresh snow off of Cardiff Ridge

GH

Climbing vs Skiing

The last month or so we've been falling behind in the blogging. Finals and crappy weather have put a damper on the skiing adventures and led to more desert climbing outings than ski touring. Here's what we've been up to the last month.

Perfect powder on God's Lawnmower. For a few days at the end of March, we were lucky to have a lot of snow and stable conditions, especielly on North facing slopes. This was a fairly rare occurance and we wanted to take advantage of this. Nico and I got some epic powder turns down God's Lawnmower on March 25th. This was 3,000 feet of deep snow from the top of Kessler Peak right the road up Big Cottonwood Canyon. We were too excited with the skiing to get any pictures of the descent but here's a few artsy pictures Nico took on the climb up.

View from the top of Argenta

Snow on the top of Kessler Peak

Justin also got some sweet runs up in Wolverine Cirque.

Tips and Tails

Other than a few days taking some laps in Days fork and around Cardiff Pass, this ended our skiing adventures for a few weeks and started our climbing adventures. The next weekend was calling for poor weather so we thought to head down to Moab and try to ski Mount Tukuhnikivatz and do some climbing. After leaving around 2 in the morning to get to the La Sals in time to ski Tuklear Reaction, the Southwest couloir running off of Tuk, we got a few miles away from the trailhead before our Truck got stuck. Looks like we were a few weeks early.  Two hours later we got dug out and were headed back to the desert to climb some rocks. The rest of the weekend was spent climbing and canyoneering around moab, as well as most of the next weekend in the San Rafael Swell.

Getting stuck heading to Tuk

A bit of night canyoneering

1200' of fun 

A few pitches up

Some fun moves

Celebrating the top

Putterman's Sex Machine

Justin pulling the overhang

Hopefully the weather starts clearing up for some more Wasatch spring skiing in the next few weeks!

GH