Long May You Run Mark, Gone 26 Years, March 22, 2020

Today is the 26th anniversary of my brother Mark's death.  When I get down with thoughts of his leaving it's good for me to get away from life for a few hours. Today I went up to where we use to hike as kids, which always brings a flood of good memories, and I came home happy . . . but the joy was short lived. . .

I've been working from home now for a week due to the Corona Virus (Covid 19), and it's stressful. My employer has told us to not come to work until further notice, and I hate mixing the peace of home with the stress of work. Honestly, if I am working I'd rather be in my cubicle. I like total separation from work and home. Don't mix the two worlds. 

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs . . .

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

but make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired of waiting . . . 

If you can dream, and not make dreams your master;

If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster,

and treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth  . . . 

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken . . .

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it . . . 

-- Rudyard Kipling

Six-inches of air, just off the drifted Rectangle Ridge. No fifty-footer for me, I like my knees too much, and the proof is that I still regularly back county ski at 58. Plus cliff jumps are passé for real skiers. My first-run ski tracks seen just ahead and to my left. Good creamy powder on the north aspects, spongy and getting wet on the south aspects.

But back to reality, the 'cabin,' about a half-mile up North Canyon (from the end of the pavement).
 Trash begets trash.

Graupel

I often see Mt. Lion tracks up here, but I've never seen the cat.

Mt. Lion patte?

The big house, from the dog-leg on Kara's Pot Farm.

Antelope Island

Clouds and sun, sun. and clouds.

Moose beds, sans Moose. 

Snow-stake, tops-out at 48-inches above the Mueller Trail. Two weeks ago this was a ski jump.

Ordinance or covenant? Harsh baptism of the new rig.

Rudy's Flat snowpack in decline - 98 cm (38.6inches).

The Mueller Trail below etched in snow (at about milepost 4.5 still), from lower Rectangle Bowl.

Deeper snow in lower Rectangle Bowl, 164cm (64.57inches), about half mile and 500 vertical feet above Rudy's Flat, the  northerly aspect holds snow longer than Rudy's Flat which has a sun friendly, SW aspect. 

View north over South Davis County, from lower Rectangle Bowl. 

I see this farmer's smoke-signal every spring. Does anyone know what he/she is burning? 

Oquirhs and Stansburys to the west.

Dead Tree Peak and Ridge (the right-downward ridge) from mid-Rectangle Bowl.

Not sure why but this is my favorite shot from the day. That said, it's a core shot waiting to happen. It's waiting for the next powder day when the world is new and all is hidden. 

Skinner, the snow, two to three inches of soft on top of hard crust, just enough soft to make skinning easy, no crampons necessary, but just barely. I slipped a few times and almost pulled them out.

New skis are perfect (BD Helio 105), only complaint is the tips are just a hair too low. When I get pigeon-toed with my gait, I tripped on the other ski.

First run turns on upper Rectangle, as seen while skinning up the Rectangle/Crescent Divide. 

Crescent Peak (left) Crescent Bowl (middle).

Blacks Peak from the skinner on the Rectangle/Crescent Divide.

Central Wasatch from boot angle, from Rectangle Peak.

A Hefty tall-kitchen garbage bag, not a good idea to use as a dry bag when you have new skins with nuclear adhesive. I've used Hefty's for years as a dry bag. I HATE mixing wet skins and sweat-saturated polypro with my dry gear, so I put my skins and wet shirts into the bags. This was my first bad experience with a garbage bag.

Feels so good when the sun comes out. View SW over SLC towards the Oquirhs.

I tried in vain launch my drone but was never successful, and I wasted about 40 minutes of ski-time, without capturing a second of ski video. The drone gets rave reviews for its obstacle avoidance and for autonomous (non-piloted) flight, and it normally works very well, but today it kept giving me an error message "Unsafe to Launch Space - it is unsafe to launch in this confined area." I flew the drone two weeks ago, launching from this exact spot without any problems, so this was very frustrating. Rectangle Peak is as open a launch pad as it gets. I finally put the drone away and just skied, and it was so nice to not screw with peripheral bullshit. I need to stop the drone craziness. For every good shot I've captured with the drone I've had five failures. Bad angles, bad tracking or just crashing the stupid thing into a tree. Mostly operator error but today it was all the drones fault. Incidentally, when I got home three hours later I launched the drone in my backyard with no problems. I think it was the white background and zero contract: no trees, no shadows. Plus when I was trying to launch there was cloud cover, which amplified the no contrast.  

Mueller trail emerging out of the snow.

Chaos and madness, the world is a total contradiction right now.  

This marker is in the middle of the North Canyon dirt road, the double track, 1/8 mile below the beginning of the single track. There is a marker on a nearby tree saying there is a survey marker nearby, but I've never seen it until today, so I've been confused for years (my wife says decades). Presumably it has been buried in the dirt. Today it was out in the open  due to the 4x4's spinning their wheels up the road in the mud and snow, scraping off the top layers.