It was some springtime conditions up Tanner's Gulch this morning. An early start, river crossings, battling wet slide debris, sunny skies, and great corn skiing. Sure sounds like spring skiing to me.
Koby, Lucy, and I set off early for Tanner's Gulch, a south-facing slide path up LCC. We battled some icy conditions and frozen wet slide debris on our way up through the bottom section. None-the-less we were psyched on the beautiful morning, and to still have a good ski run in front of us despite the low amount of snow filling in most of the lines I wanna ski.
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| Shouldering the skis for a quick steep section |
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| Just to get an idea of some of the debris we were going through |
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| Beautiful morning |
Near the top of the bowl, Koby had to turn around in order to get to a meeting, but still got some great skiing in on his way down. Lucy and I continued up the final chute section as the snow continued to heat up, getting to prime corn conditions. We ended up accidentally taking the 'scenic route' up a section of this chute, making a little side trip to the ridge separating our line from a parallel couloir leading up to Dromedary Peak. However, from this ridge I was able to scope out this other sweet looking couloir that leads up to the Southeast face of Sunrise Peak (O'Sullivan). Hopefully I'll be getting up to ski that sometime this weekend. It looked so fun!
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| Booting up the chute |
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| The 'scenic route' |
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| This weekends adventure hopefully! |
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| Lucy topping out the chute |
We topped out the chute, snapped some pictures, and switched to ski mode at the perfect time. The snow was warm enough to give us great skiing conditions, but not to the point of any wet slide danger. I dropped first, battling a bit of hard choppy snow in the shaded upper section, which soon transitioned to much softer snow a little further on. Lucy followed and laid out some sweet tele turns down the chute. It's definitely inspiring to see someone charge so hard on tele, or any ski for that matter.
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| Top of the line |
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| Lucy getting ready to drop |
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| Looking back up the top chute |
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| Enjoying some corn |
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| Lucy sending it |
The rest of the run consisted of great corn skiing and tons of smiles. The snow had softened up a lot in the bottom couloir section as well, which made it a bit easier to cross over the debris. With tired legs, we made our way through the shrubs and rocks at the mouth of the Gulch down to the road. A quick hitchhike later we met up with Justin at the park n' ride, who thankfully agreed to give us a ride home.
With no snow in the forecast, it looks like there might be quite a few more 'spring' days in the Wasatch coming up. It's a bummer that this winter's not shaping out to be the greatest for snow fall, but the least we can do is make the best of it. Hard to complain when you're still getting great skiing!
GH
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