Climb a mountain in mid-winter, searching for a few turns in a shitty-thin snow cover, finding sharp edges and daggers upon every turn, but that light, that glorious light coming from the heavens, not just warms my face, my shoulders and arms, but warms my soul. Climbing a mountain in mid-winter pushes away the darkness felt below. It feels joyful and I feel light. I probably smile.
There is no escape from the arrogance of small minds. I am surrounded. My town is out of balance and engagement and discussion is like skis on rock, best avoided with all human capability. I have already lost too many Brothers.
The rocks don’t feel, the snow has no soul, and the wind cuts through me, insentient to its power. I once roamed these hills like a lion, like God’s chosen, not feeling the cold wind, but now, with too many winters, the wind brings the pain of razors. The wind does not feel, the wind does not care, and the wind now cuts, even like those rocks on skis through the thin snow. Aging now, the pain is compounded, focused and factored, into the heart of that old lion.
Reverence is fleeting. Why do so many treat reverences, like melting snow, absent from thought once gone? The snow will ultimately lose to the power of that beautiful, warm sun. That sun grows each day, gaining strength, bringing more melting, evaporating from my town the devotion to ideals once held as truth. Snow melts, the spirit of important truths may melt, but realities and facts will reemerge, just like a new blanket of shining white snow. Even in this weak winter, the snow will come, covering everything with a renewed reverence, a cleansing baptism, and all pain will be forgotten, just for a moment. New Brotherhoods are born again, just for a moment, but, sadly, Brothers too often demand loyalty to their narrow minds. Snow melts, reverence is lost, Brotherhoods die.
I ski, turning on the deeper drifts of the ridge because the slopes are too thin, but the drift is narrow and, locked to the curves of the sculpted arms of the mountain, and where it begins to flatten, the drift loses depth, I turn and I’m immediately tripped by a spike of rock, tossed to the grass and sage still standing defiant through the thin snow. Landing in a heap brings a laugh, the absurdity of skiing in such poor conditions brings a flicker of reconciliation. Is skiing in twelve inches on dangerous ground an arrogant defiance of reverence? A defiance of Brotherhoods?
When the day is done, that glorious, life-giving sun quickly retreating, my energy burned, I descend that mountain, the darkness again seeping back into my heart. The sadness of losing Brothers rising in my heart with the growing cold of the setting sun. My thoughts again spin. Maybe the darkness is all mine? Maybe my Brothers have not left me? Maybe my mountain is within?
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The lower trail was outright hell, sidewalk-hard ice with gooey mud on the edges.
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Full-on, alpineering crampons would have been genius, but I'm 58, a half-employed CPA who can't begin to afford retirement. Does that sound like a genius? Most of my collegues that I started with out of college are now freaking wealthy and they work becasue they love it, or to get away from the house, or to just keep pulling in the wealth. The big mistake I made in my career is that I've always been a bit of a free spirit in the sense that I've always found much more joy from the my mountain hobbies than I did from my career and all my bosses knew where my loyalties lay. In the summers I climbed, in the winters I skied. Yes, I was a loyal employee, I worked 8 to 5 every day, five days a week, and never missed a day that wasn't a legal vacation day, but successful CPAs work 6 to 8 each day, 6 to 7 days per week and they donate 3/4s of their vacation days back to the company. Fuck their wives and family, work is greater than God. All my bosses of the last 34 years knew I just didn't give a shit. They knew I'd do just barely enough to remain gainfully employed, so, I'm the guy who never got promotions, never got huge raises, never got that key to the executive washroom. Work is a bitch. I wish I had never gone to college and majored in accounting. It is not who I am.
But we're talking about crampons here . . . and my three pairs are gathering thick dust at home, none used since Mt. Rainier ten years ago. |
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Mid North Canyon, in Kara's Meadows, the snow was maybe a soft, ten inches and it was debatable whether skinning or booting was best. I fought the urge to skin, thinking that all the exposed weeds would be a hindrance, but when I finally switched, skinning was good, much easier just for the extra float, bringing some ease to the upward effort. . . but still too weedy.
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KPF has seen better days, nearly unusable unless some big work is done, or we get three feet of snow.
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Cut stumps from efforts of a day long gone. Oak, even Gamble Oak, is tough to cut.
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| View down from midway up KPF. Ugly! We need a lot of snow to make this a going concern, like yesteryears. |
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| Cheap Bastard! Just go buy some new gloves! But no, when I got home I put them on the "sew" pile, my sew pile, not Kara's. Real men sew and knit. |
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| The snow stake just below Rudy's Flat, out in the open, way out. |
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| Moose beds? I think the Moose are back, I saw evidence all day but I never saw the Moose. |
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Rudy's Flat, pathetic cover!
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Eleven total inches (28cm) at Rudy's Flat, 7,160 feet elevation. This is more of joke than a serious snow profile, you never see profiles on just 11 inches of snow . . . . but you have now. But as the experts say, know the history of your snowpack and live to ski another day.
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First time ever, I skinned up 100% of the summer trail from Rudy's Flat to Bountiful Ridge. The slope angle of this trail is too steep for efficient skinning. Skin track slope angles are said to be the more energy effienct at 15-degrees rather tahn the Wasatch-popular 30+Degrees, so to flatten the angle we use switchbacks backs and forth across the slope to keep that 15-degree slop angle intact. It flattens the angle to preserve energy and keeps the skin track useable for multiple uses. If it is too steep, in just a few uses it is so hard, icy and slick, that it become unusable by the following skiers. Including yourself and if you were the one who set that track, then you'd just be breaking trail all over again to set another usable skin track, and that would be very stupid, almost as stupid as majoring in accounting. But today I skinned that damn summer trail to a TEE. I never left it's route up the mountain. 'Big Whip' you might be saying, "this is the Wasatch and we go steep because we are real women/men." Just know this, that summer trail is damn steep, up to 40-degrees in spots, and it runs directly up the fall line. I did it because I'm OCD stubborn and also because I saw that some hiker had booted the trail (last week?) in what looked line full-on mountaineering crampons, eight spikes and two horizontal front-point, like mine at home gathering dust. The prints were fully evident in each step. So, I thought, if this dumbass really needed crampons to hike this trail, I'm going to show this "Dartmouth-Mountaineering-Club-Pampered-Ass" what Wasatch Back Country skiers are made of. So, I used all my inner 'skin-whisperer' zen and skinned up that trail, slipping once or twice where the angle and hard-pack conspired against me, but I quickly regained the purchase of my skins and I skinned up that trail in an otherwise smooth and efficient manner. |
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Dead Tree with Bountiful Peak and Francis Peak beyond.
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| Rectangle Bowl from Dead Tree Peak, normally a great, safe ski run in mid January, but not this year as you can see. |
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Why boot when you can skin, show those skins who's boss.
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Top of the Rectangle, I've skied this line a thousand times, down the ridge then down the big face where the face fans open (just out of view here) and where the angles rolls from a modest 20-degrees to a fun 37-degrees, but this year it is unskiable even for a dumbass such as me.
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| From the top of Crescent Bowl, looking back towards Rectangle Peak. |
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| Yours truly, breaking his cardinal rule that the best selfies are faceless. |
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| From Rectangle Peak (8,294 feet), view NE toward Crescent Peak - the near snow dome (8,351 feet) - and Blacks Peak (8,650 feet), the leftward, limestone outcrop poking through the Douglas Fir. Sessions Mountain Ridgeline is way off in the distance (left to middle ridge-line on the skyline). The highpoint of Sessions is 9,256 feet, which is the east or left-highpoint seen here. The western or right-highpoint of Sessions is 9,224 feet. Both those high points form a massive south facing bowl, the bowl seen above, 1/3 brown and 2/3rds snowy, is known as Rocky Basin by the locals. Rocky Basin is accessed from Bountiful from the Kenney Creek Trail, or, if you're adventureous and like stickers in your socks and some blood letting, hike the pipeline right-of-way out of Mueller Park up to the ridge then ridge-hop that ridgeline east to Sessions Peak. |
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| Looking down a favorite ski run when there is a bit more snow, Crescent Bowl. |
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| Another shot of Crescent Peak and Blacks Peak, from the Crescent headwall above Crescent Bowl. |
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| Blacks Peak above the forming cornice on Crescent Peak. |
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| A few shots of the snow, sun and shadows on the ridge atop Mark's Ghost. Beautiful! |
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| Mark's Ghost South. From the Valley I scope Bountiful Ridge almost daily and it looked as if Mark's Ghost might have a bit more snow than the rest of the ridge due to its sheltered nature and lack of sun. It looked better than anything else I could see, but, once here, it was still too thin to commit to a solo run (as in alone) into a bowl that, in early season it can have hidden dangers, and requires effort to escape, so I opted to go back down the approach ridge and ski Dead Tree Ridge given it's proximity to the Summer Trail and Rudy's Flat. I'm old and tired and I have a lingering health thing, rock-solid excuses of a 58-year-old dandy, so I needed an easier escape than Mark's Ghost in early season. When the snow is deep, the escape out of Mark's Ghost's, like many of Bountiful Ridge ski runs, is an afterthought due to the easy escape down and out to the Mueller Park Mtn. Bike trail which is just a short traverse away. But that options is locked out today with a living hell of brush. I've done plenty of bush-whacking in my life but I'm slowly out-growing the character weakness. Today I resisted the urge. |
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| Crescent Ridge has way more dead trees than the real Dead Tree Ridge. Some Dandy did a shitty job of naming this place. |
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| Heading down to ski Dead Tree Ridge, my ascent tracks on Rectangle Peak with Antelope Island beyond. I've never seen so many big animal tracks up on Bountiful Ridge in winter - they are everywhere, criss-crossing the slopes and ridges like it's easy or something. They look like Mule Deer, Moose and maybe an Elk, with a shot-gun blast of Coyote Tracks circling crazily everywhere. The abundance of tracks this high is not normal here in winter. Presumably the wildlife is still high on the mountain due to the lack of snow. |
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| Cute little nest - sorry for the out of focus. |
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| Damn irritating to see all the shit up here left by Utah Eagle Scouts. |
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| And if you are such a dumbshit that you need trail markers, stay home. |
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And if you're such a dumbshit that you need a pullup bar at 7,160 feet, stay home, bolt this to your Mom's Swedish Masseuse. Leave the trees bolt-free.
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On a much better note, the moose are back! Wish I would have seen them! |
