Spring skiing in January - Tanner's Gulch 1/22

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.

Shouldering the skis for a quick steep section

Just to get an idea of some of the debris we were going through

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!

Booting up the chute

The 'scenic route'

This weekends adventure hopefully!

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.

Top of the line

Lucy getting ready to drop

Looking back up the top chute

Enjoying some corn

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

Pinball Alley 1/18

After Greg went scouting up on Superior yesterday for potential lines that could go, he set his sights on Pinball Alley on the south face Superior. It had a single track going into to it and after further scouting from the bottom of the chute, he decided that it could go. It had enough snow in it to fill the tight couloir but not too much that it became unskiable. With high hopes of being able to ski Pinball Alley in these prime conditions, Greg and I headed up Superior today.

Boot Packing up Superior 

Once on the summit of Superior, we skied the top section of the south face and traversed into the top of Pinball Couloir. The couloir is no more then a ski length wide throughout and at it's crux, the slope angle is about 60 degrees depending on the snowpack. Today the snow conditions were ideal in the couloir and it skied awesome. You could make hop turns throughout it and didn't need to straight line any point. We had a great time skiing this classic line.

Our Decent Route

Looking into Pinball Alley

Greg skiing out of the couloir

Until next time!

JT

South face of Superior 1/17

The southeast face of Mt Superior is one of those lines that never lets me down. Every time I go up there I always end up finding great skiing, and have an overall awesome day. It's less than three hours to the summit, and the face spits you out close to your car, with about 3,000 feet of magnificent ski terrain in between. Not to mention the great views you get the entire way up.

South face of Mt Superior

Hiking up

However, this time I actually didn't think the skiing was going to be that good. After a week of sunny skies and temps up to the the 40's, I was pretty confident that I would be battling some sort of strong crust for most of the descent. I set out with the goal of scoping out two other lines up there that I was curious weather or not they had enough snow yet: Monte Cristo Direct and Heart of Darkness. After making it to the summit in a little over two and a half hours, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was still a good amount of fresh snow up there. Where there wasn't fresh snow, the snow was soft and untracked, which made it possible to gain speed and throw in some big turns down the face.

A bit of scrambling on the ridge

Psyched!

3,000 feet later and I was back at the road, psyched on the conditions, great Wasatch weather, and the company of skiing with some new friends I met on the way up. Now that conditions are starting to stabilize, at least on some south facing terrain, it looks like it's time to take advantage of this and get on some steep terrain. About time!

Ben on his way out of the first choke

Great run

GH

Cliff lines on Cardiff 1/15

Looking for a quick tour before class. Justin, Magnum, and I headed out Wednesday morning to take advantage of all the fresh snow before it warmed up in the afternoon. We headed up Cardiff Fork without too much of an idea of what we wanted to ski, just happy to be outside. The possibilities were skiing Two Trees, Little Superior, or finding some cliffs in Cardiff Fork to mess around with. After a great last few powder days up at Alta, we were psyched on getting the adrenaline going again. Cliffs it was.

Taking off in the morning, all smiles

Justin fell into a bit of snow as we took our skins off

Cardiff Ridge (Picture taken two days later)

After accessing the conditions we opted for a double set of cliffs that ran skiers left. Justin went first as we snapped some pictures of him on the first hit. Then went Magnum, and I took up the rear. Following the cliff lines we enjoyed some great powder turns on our way out. One of our favorite parts of the day was the whole process of scouting out our line, accessing conditions, and then sending. It's one thing to stomp cliffs in the resorts, but in the backcountry there's a whole other aspect of fear and risk that has to be countered. It makes it a bit more exciting, and a lot more rewarding when you end up having a great line.

Our line of choice, the double set. (Picture taken 2 days later)

Justin going big on the first hit

Magnum post-send

Getting some freshies on our way out

GH

Little and Main Chute on 11/8

Looking back down the valley

After getting more snow this past week, we decided to head back up to Alta and get some more fresh turns in. As we were skinning up, we realized that the snow wasn't as soft as we would of hoped. With wishful thinking, we decided to head up to the top of Baldy to see how Main chute looked and to see if Little Chute would go too.

Orie on top of Main Chute

After getting on top of Baldy, Orie and Kurt decided to drop into Main Chute in hopes of sniffing out what little freshies remained. On the other hand, Little chute was untouched and looked good to go. Best way to spice up a classic ski decent... ski it before it completely fills in. Greg and I both enjoyed awesome lines down Little chute with some fun monitory drops thrown in to add some spice. Can't wait for opening day at Alta!
JT

Greg getting ready to drop Little Chute

Greg halfway down little

Preseason Skiing at Alta

This weekend we were able to get up and take advantage of some of the great snow that this latest preseason storm had dumped on the upper elevations. On Wednesday, Justin was able to get up and get some deep snow during a run down Alta. Friday Justin and I headed up to Alta again in search of more snow. We were surprised to find some great skiing, about 15 inches of freshies, with very little rock encounters on the Baldy shoulder. It was a great afternoon of skiing. The next morning Justin, Lucy, and I headed up to Alta again, looking to get on Main Chute off of Mt Baldy. We were hoping to get first tracks, but soon noticed that there was already a pair of ski tracks coming out of it from earlier that morning, and a party of 5 or 6 headed up in front of us. None-the-less we were psyched. We got to the top and scoped out the possibility of skiing Little Chute instead, but opted to stick with Main to avoid destroying our skis. The skiing down Main was great; the snow was soft and mostly all the rocks were covered up. We got back down to base with a car-to-car time of about 3 hours. It was a great day of skiing, especially for the beginning of November! Here's a link to a video of us skiing Main Chute: https://vimeo.com/78446652

Altas filling in on 10/30

Justin getting some fresh snow on the Baldy shoulder

Lucy heading up to the summit of Baldy

Getting ready to drop. Photo cred: Lucy

Panorama from on top of Main Chute. Photo Cred Lucy

Nothing Like Strapping the Skis on in September!

Right after Greg's recap of the summer came the good fortune of the first snow! This late September storm dropped a couple inches across the top of the Wasatch. So after an excited text from Greg, we all met up after class and headed for the hills!

We made it up to guardsman, and went for a short jaunt down to the blown zone. Now it's not quite the same as strapping on the ole AT setup and hitting the back country, but it was a blast to be on the skis again. We rubbed off the rust and JT threw down some pre-season tricks. Here's Greg shredding some PVC off to the left!

We skied until dark, and Chip the HippyTurns mascot had a blast playing in the snow. It's never a bad thing to have your first day on the skis on September 26th! Let's keep the snow coming! We here at HippyTurns are ready for a long and snowy season!

-K