Randonee - French for 'Can't Tele'

March 6, 2020 - Skiing Fuller's (aka Black's Peak South Drainage, North Fork City Creek Canyon)

Dropping off Crescent Peak into upper Fuller's. Black's Peak is the knob just above. So easy with fat skis, stiff boots, heals locked.

Trying to get caught up with my posts . . . this post is from an outing on Friday, March 6, 2020....which was warm and windy, hadn't snowed in over a week but the snowpack was good (about average for Early March), the conditions were ok-to-bad skiing, from over-ripe corn changing to total mush in just a matter of minutes. We should have quit and headed for home an hour earlier than we did. 

Upper Fuller's, dropping into the North Fork of City Creek Canyon. 

Stats on the day: 7:00AM start;  9.57 total miles; 3,764 feet vertical gain; 3hrs 39min moving time.  

KPF under moguls.

Rudy's Flat (7,141 ft elevation) under 123cm (48.43 inches) of snow. Two weeks ago there was 130cm (51.18inches). The cool temps have preserved the snowpack, but with sun this will go quickly.

My rock placement in/on a Mtn. Mahogany years ago (I've only had to replace it once in the last ten years) located near where the summer trail tops-out onto Bountiful Ridge, above Tele-Hill. Normally we skin up Rectangle Bowl or Crescent Ridge to gain Bountiful Ridge, but today, feeling a bit nostalgic, we accessed Bountiful Ridge via the low-point of the ridge at it's SW end, with our skin track ascending the ski run I call Tele Hill (aka - Face-plant Hill).

If you know the history of BC skiing then you know that early on (pre-2000's) everyone used tele gear. Tele Hill (the ski run) truly is a face-plant hill, given how archaic old tele gear was. When I was a kid (early-mid 1970's) I got bored with lifts pretty damn quick and I started hiking for turns while still in Junior High (go Millcreek Mustangs!). First it was the low-hung fruit of Cave Hollow (now a trophy-home-hell) and Pyramid Peak (site of my first experience with an avalanche, about 1975). While in high school I became quite a good resort skier, but while riding the tram at Snowbird I was always scanning Superior and Flagstaff, wondering how the skiing was over there, far away from the blow-hards spewing shit on the tram. I started skiing Bountiful Ridge regularly when I wasn't skiing Snowbird, which was the mid 1970's. At first I used my resort gear, booting through deep snow with skis on a pack, but the ascents quickly evolved to using snowshoes. When I got a real job, I bought tele-gear which was the cutting edge gear of the day for ski-mountaineering: long and skinny tele skis (Tua Telemark, Toute Neige, 200cm length, 60mm underfoot) with soft leather boots (Merrill Super Doubles) and Rottefella 3-pin bindings.

My skis from 30 years ago when I did laps on Tele Hill (aka Face-plant Hill): Tua Telemark - Toute Neige, 200cm length, 60mm underfoot.

Crescent Peak from the drainage in upper North Fork of City Creek. Fuller's (the ski run) drops down the leftward ridge and onto the open slope seen above, our turns barely visible in the glare of the snow, if you look really hard.

My boots from the early days - Merrill Super Doubles - soft leathers, about half the rise above the ankle as my current Scarpa F1's or Atomic Backland's, with an estimated flex rating of 40 (my estimate but no joke, very soft!). Check out the Rottefella Bindings: true 3-pins, 75mm offset with zero free-flex (fighting the binding every step while skinning) with zero tension springs (make that NO Springs) to snap the ski back onto your foot while skiing/turning. Tele skiing on 3-pins was truly an art, combining balance, strength and stamina. None of the fake turns you see from todays BC crowd with their stiff downhill boots, huge, surfy boards and free-flex tech bindings that don't wear you out while hiking uphill. Yeah, we never jumped off 50-foot cliffs or did double back flips, so yes, todays skiers are the best the world has ever seen (for the record  I have managed to land 360's on flimsy tele-gear (helicopter by 1970's parlance), but my argument is real: on average, when taking into  account for the shitty gear, the skiers of the 1970's and 1980's were far more talented than today's skiers. Want proof? If you want a good laugh, make a deal with the kid next to you on the tram, the kid with the 120mm skis and who rarely leaves the groomers. Offer him $50 to ski the bumps on lower Silver Fox, but he must do it in under a minute, from cat track to the bridge. We did it all day long in 1982, on our K2-KVC Comps (200cm, 75mm). It was awesome training for the flimsy, skinny tele gear we took to the BC. The best advice for anyone who wants to ski off-piste, get damn good at a resort before skinning to the top of Patsy Marly. Remember, what goes up must come down.     

Today's young skiers have no idea what it took to ski an easy, 35-degree slope with ten-inches of blower powder. The gear used in '80's and 90's was archaic and primitive by today's standard, but it was light-years ahead of what we used in the 1970's (I still have all my old gear - I'll post photo's in a future post.). One had to be very committed to be a BC skier back then. The gear alone was a very unforgiving filter of the riff-raff who toyed (mostly talk) with the fantasy of back-country skiing. I knew hundreds of one-and done skiers back then. Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but the equipment very much limited the number of skiers hiking for turns. Most folks just did not have the skills to ski on that gear. If they did, most were too smart to NOT self-inflict the pain, suffering and physical output required for BC skiing when there was a perfectly fine tram or chairlift hanging off every other peak in the Wasatch.

Yes, the bindings were called 3-pin for a reason. Boots are shown with their corresponding 3-holes.

But I digress, we approached Crescent Peak via lower Bountiful Ridge. Here, the namesake of Dead Tree Peak, which fell over a few years ago. 

Fuller checking out the lines in Dead Tree Bowl.

Dead Tree Bowl

Approaching Crescent Peak with Black's Peak peeking out just above (left-ward slanting, treed slope just right of the white drifted Crescent Peak.

Our ski tracks at the base of Fuller's (ski run) which drops down the southern aspect of Bountiful Ridge into the North Fork of City Creek Canyon, just below Black's Peak.

Ascending back up Bountiful Ridge up this beautiful drainage upper North Fork of City Creek Canyon. Black's Peak is hidden by the conifers mid-left.

Life finds a way. Douglas Fir spreading the love.

Upper North Fork of City Creek Canyon, Black's Peak above, hidden by the firs.

The bottom of Fuller's. We could've kept skiing, but the drainage was getting flatter and more like a half-pipe with aspens than a real great ski run, plus its a classic terrain trap, so we stopped here. The stability was welded today, but you just never know what might happen. Why take chances?

Cool rock as we skin back up to crescent Peak, bigger than it looks (for scale, see Brett in next photo).

Fuller with Crescent Peak just ahead, skin track heading SW from the North Fork of City Creek Canyon. 

Quagga Mussels - someone didn't clean their boat. 

Our turns down Fuller's, descending into the North Fork of City Creek Canyon.

 More turns on Fuller's. Conditions were over-ripe corn. It was still good but we skied it about a half hour too late.

Fuller's drops down this rounded ridge-let then angles right into the Doug Firs (middle right), then drops down another open slope (hidden below) to the base of the drainage. This is a south aspect between 7.2 and 8.4K elevation (you can drop farther down the drainage but this is where the best skiing is found), so the slope is prone to thin cover. It's a great run until you get a missive core-shot in your brand new skis (yes - that happened). During thin snow years this run is often not skiable. 

Looking down Fuller's. We usually stop and re-skin where the drainage pinches rightward, mid-right below. Across the way is Little Black Mountain which is the south side of City Creek Canyon, and the Central Wasatch beyond.  

Snow cover starting to thin. March has been a lamb, still coolish but not a lot of snow.

The Mueller/North Canyon trail emerging, just west of Rudy's Flat.

From the KPF Traverse, the Mueller Trail is emerging from the snow with the southerly aspects melting off.

Green among winter's chaos.