Anyone who has read my older posts know that I’m a bit territorial of the ski-offerings on Bountiful Ridge. Yeah, I’ve been a bitch at times, but I certainly did not invent the selfish ski attitude. All the big names of Wasatch backcountry skiing are very coy about divulging their ski locations. Yeah, they post pictures on Instagram, and they post stats and photos on Strava, but they rarely, if ever, post a map or name specific locations. And No, I am not implying in anyway that I am a "big name” in the world of Wasatch backcountry skiing, just that they are big names in the ski world for a reason, and that is because they are NOT stupid. And No, I am not implying that I am not stupid, rather, I understand why they are coy. Like them, I just like a lot of space when I hike for hours and hours to ski, and feel cheated after hiking and hiking for hours only to find that everything is tracked out. The truth is I’m a small player in a small, grungy location in the Wasatch, and I have skied this small grungy location for decades because I was naive to think no one would ever waste their time skiing here. It really is small and grungy, but the ‘faddists’ have arrived.
But why am I surprised this small, grungy location is now crowded? It should be obvious to all why Bountiful Ridge is now crowded when it was quite solitary just a few short years ago. Crunch the numbers, do the math. Crowding in the mountains was inevitable. Today’s world has 8.5 billion people, and the Wasatch Front’s population has triple in just my lifetime. Plus another huge factor, ski equipment has evolved (can I use that term in Republican/Mormon Utah??) to the point that it is now idiot proof.
Before all the fancy new gear, skis were long and skinny, boots were made of soft leather with more flex than an 1970’s East German gymnast, and the bindings were three-pins, and only three-pins, no powerful garage door lift-springs under foot to snap the ski back onto the boot between each dropped-knee turn. Back then telemark turns were not a sign of rebellion or a compulsion to be different like it is today with the massive four-buckle plastic boots and DIN 16 NTN bindings, rather, telemark skiing was a requirement because that was the only gear we had. Only the most skilled and athletic could ski Main Days or the Birthday Chutes top to bottom without yard-saleing. We fell a lot, but the rest of us just kept going, knowing that face-planting every fourth turn was part of the game. The fact is, back-country skiing was a miserable experience for all but the most masochistic. The gear was a serious barrier to entry. Most folks would buy a kit, ski three times and absolutely HATE every second, then take that shiny new kit to DI (Deseret Industries), and dump it, then hire their Mormon Bishop to Exorcise the tree-hugging demons from their souls, then ride lifts the rest of their lives. Today back country skiing has no barriers to entry due to gear. The riff-raff is no longer filtered out because of sheer misery.
So it’s now crowded everywhere. We have an exploding population, coupled with perfect, idiot-proof gear and a mindset of youngsters, young adults and bored professionals that need to hike for turns. Now, they ride lifts only when their real friends aren’t watching. Yes, back country skiing is now well beyond the “fad” stage, so it is no surprise that Bountiful Ridge, and everything in the Wasatch Range, now gets hit incredibly hard, by both the cranky old-schoolers and the “fad” skiers.
My point if this: there is nothing on Bountiful Ridge that does not get tracked out after every storm, except for a few hidden gems. Hidden Couloir is one. The location is obvious, but the the fun-to-work ratio totally sucks. It’s a lot of work to get to, more work to get out and the skiing is not great. It’s a long run by Bountiful Ridge standards, but it in a classic terrain trap, it’s steep, at the prime-slide angle of upper 30’s, it has three competing fall-lines, so it feels like your turns are never completed, that you're always turning hard right and only half a turn left, and it ends in a tight, bush-whack HELL that one must navigate to get out. Oh, and it's in a totally different drainage than the popular access of North Canyon, so its a long way out through a low-elevation brushy-hell, all while hoping/praying that the slab on that big, 38-degree headwall does not release. A burial would be deadly and, if you’re solo like me, your body would not be found until spring, assuming the Coyotes, Mountain Lions and rabid Mule Deer haven’t throughly scattered your bones.
Today was a white out and the entrance to the Hidden Couloir was tough to find (hence the name), but it was a fun adventure. I ski it once or twice a year, always wondering why I keep going back and swearing “never again,” but by the next weekend, when I see all the tracked out stuff on Bountiful Ridge, I weaken and start thinking about the Hidden Couloir again. "Was it really that bad??" The tracked out ridge is a big incentive to go back. In over forty years of skiing the Hidden Couloir, I’ve never seen another set of tracks down the Hidden Couloir, so go back I must.
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