Winter 2020-2021 was a bust, snow-wise. We did have three weeks of big dumps in February, piling deep on the rotten, sugary crap that had accumulated since November, causing very dangerous avalanche conditions until mid-March, resulting in several devastating avalanche accidents. On a selfish level, the Spring of 2021 in the Wasatch has not offered the best spring skiing. It has lacked cold nighttime temperatures which is bad on two fronts: 1) no refreeze means no corn; and, 2) the winter snowpack is melting quickly. So we had to act with urgency to ski some lines that often remain skiable well into June.
Today we (B. Fuller, me) skied the East Couloir of Deseret Peak. Deseret Peak has three beautiful, aesthetic couloirs that just beg to be skied, but the names are confusing: the double North Couloirs, on the south side of the the peak, which I call the Twin Couloirs, and the East Couloir, on the north side of the peak. Presumably all three couloirs are named for the directions they face. I use to call the East Couloir the North Couloir just because it was on the north side of the peak whereas the Twin Couloirs are on the SW side of the peak. 'East Couloir' is a stupid name, but that’s the name listed in the latest Backcountry Ski Guide for Utah, so, to avoid confusion, I’ll go with the ski-guide name - the East Couloir it is.
Which begs the question, how many shitty guides does Utah need? I have at least six ski-guide-books and numerous ski maps, covering every minute detail of every mountain in Utah, and it is not a good thing. We are buried with too much information and it weakens us as a human race. Are we, backcountry skiers, so ignorant of map skills and so lacking of a true sense of adventure that we need a breadcrumb trail to find everything? Is it because the Newbies are so brain-washed with 'lift-theory' that they can’t envision skiing anything without a waypoint-breadcrumb trail? Are the six-lane skin-tracks, prevalent in the Wasatch, leading to that pot of gold, not guide enough? A blind-man could easily find his way to Reynolds Peak just by tapping his ski pole along the massive skinner always present up Mill D North. Being so geographical challenged, it’s a wonder this new generation of Backcountry skiers can even reproduce. I miss the good-old-days. When we saw a distant, snow covered mountain and thought, "that might be a good ski,” we went, explored and skied, sometimes disappointed and demoralized, but we always came home for the better. Much better.
Today we drove up South Willow Canyon to the locked gate at the Boy Scout Campground and parked at the nearby Medina Flats Trailhead. From there we rode e-bikes around the locked gate and up the South Willow Canyon, through the Lower Narrows then the Upper Narrows. If you have never been up South Willow Canyon you are in for treat. The Narrows are parallel rock walls about 15-feet apart which form a tight channel for South Willow Creek. Unfortunately a road was blasted through those narrows giving those narrows a feel of mid-city subway. That damned road! The Lower and Upper Narrows are maybe a quarter mile apart. The upper Narrows are a bit taller and tighter than the Lowers. They are short in length (150 feet?) but they are great natural features of vertical-to-overhanging rock, dotted with bolts and quick-draws for the youngsters to climb. I saw two routes (out of twenty?) that I might have a chance to get up, but generally they are too steep (continuously overhung) for this old man. Even with a highway blasted through, and the creek channelled into a man-made canal, both sets of Narrows are stunning, although that road is a major downer. I’d rather see them in their natural state. I wish the road terminated below the Narrows with the hiking trail head starting there, adding about 2 miles each way to hiking Deseret Peak. But that is a lost cause, the road is there and humans never retreat from man-made shit.
Just above the upper narrows the South Willow Canyon road was blocked by avalanche debris, hard snow covered by big Douglas Firs, brought down off the steep mountainside on the north side of the canyon, the reason why the road is still gated. Clearing work had begun as most of the trees had been sawed into two to three foot lengths but none yet removed, evidenced by the huge piles covering the road. We pushed the bikes over the avy debris then continued pedaling up the road.
At the end of the road, at the Loop Campground, the trail starts near the boundary of the Stansbury Mountains Wilderness Area. We locked the bikes to a tree at the Loop Campground and started booting up the trail. We soon started hitting snow, which was mostly supportable, so we just kept booting. At the stream crossing, about a mile from the trailhead, the snow was mostly continuous so we switched from booting to skinning. From the creek crossing the summer trail takes the SE route up Mill Fork, but we opted for the shorter, direct route due SW up Dry Lake Fork. Dry Lake Fork is named for a dry lake (obviously) which sits at the base of the Twin Couloirs. It is a large, flat meadow ringed by mature Douglas Fir on the north, east and west, and the Twin Couloirs towering overhead to the south. I use the word stunning way too much, but that dry lake is nothing but STUNNING! I have no idea when the lake went dry, but I’m guessing my grandfather could have seen the lake when he packed horses up here in the early 1900’s.
We had planned to ski one or both of the Twin Couloirs, but once the East Couloir came into view we stopped and stared. Without a word, just a look of agreement, we decided to ski the East Couloir instead. It is steeper and narrower than either of the Twin Couloirs, and maybe safer due to less rock fall than the west Twin, which has the 400-foot, rotten-rock wall of Deseret Peak towering overhead, but the East Twin may not be that much safer, it still has big, rotten walls towering overhead, just no as big as the walls looming over the Twins. Every time I've skied thw Twins there is a dirty debris slide of fallen rock streaming off the rock fin that separates the Twins. So we headed west, to skin and then boot up the East Couloir.
We skinned up the apron and into the couloir, Brett up for the challenge to skin up the whole thing, but as the couloir narrowed and the kick turns coming fast and furious, I bagged the skinning, strapped skis to pack and started booting. While I was stopped to strap skis to my pack, Brett continued skinning and kicking turns. I am nototious slow in transitions, and when I started booting I was surprised to see he was almost to the top. He was still skinning, his kick-turns becoming more and more frequent as the upper couloir got way skinny. Finally he gave up, shouldering skis and booting the last 100 feet at the top of the couloir. His hundreds of kick turns, looking like a total pain-in-the-ass, were the better technique today, he still handily beat me to the top.
At the divide we were just a short half mile and 600 vertical feet from the summit of Deseret Peak, but Brett saw a ski run down the west side, the Skull Valley side of the range, a run through a forest-burn of widely spaced trees, wide open and skiable down an easy 30-degree slope. We skinned toward the summit but at the shoulder of the peak Brett deemed his ski run would start there, but I only saw the summit of Deseret Peak just ahead, begging me to climb to its apex. I left the skis on that shoulder as the remainder of the summit ridge was exposed rock and, while Brett skied a run to the west, I tagged the summit. All alone on the summit brought back great memories of hiking here with my Dad 20 years ago when he was almost 80 years old. I hope I have that old-man-fitness DNA.
At the summit I quickly took some photos then booted down to my skis then skied down to the top of the East Couloir, where Brett was. He’s always there waiting. I must be slow.
The top of the Couloir was steep, maybe fifty degrees for the first 30 feet due to its cornice, but the angle quickly flattens to a manageable 40 degree, then half-way down it flattens again to about 35 degrees. I dropped in first and we leap-frogged the upper, steeper section, the way you do when avalanche conditions are suspect, but today the snow conditions were welded, so we leap-frogged only out of habit, and maybe to catch some photos while the other skied by. The snow was solid but getting really mushy due to the warm temps. The upper, steeper section of the couloir was much easier to ski than the lower, flatter half and the even flatter apron, only because the steepness amplifies the affect of gravity. A skier accelerates faster as the slope steepens, making turns easier in manky snow. The mushy snow was a drag, quite literally, once the the angle drops below 30 degrees.
We skied down, down, down, even down-climbing an unseen, short vertical cliff with skis in hand, then skied down the Dry Lake stream bed almost to the trailhead. The tongues of snow remaining in that stream-bed were a hidden ski run out. At the bikes we changed back into runners, strapped skis to bikes and pedaled home.
A great day on Deseret Peak with a good friend, best way to end the 2021-2021 ski season.
