City Creek Cirque and The Crow’s Foot Left Toe, Friday March 11, 2022

 

It skis bigger than it looks, it gets brushy and the slope flattens the lower you get. If nothing else, there's not another ski track within miles, and I’ll bet you a an extra-large Slurpee that I’m the only person to ever ski this slope. No one else is that stupid, just look at my skis and you’ll know why (see below).   

Grunge skiing. Adventure skiing comes with a price. 

Today I just wanted to get away far from the maddening crowd, and I succeeded, I saw only one other person the whole day. It’s fun to get off the popular routes and go looking for new descents. I skied what I call the City Creek Cirque and the Crows Foot-Left Toe. Adventure skiing to say the least, no one skis these places, for good reason: rocks, brush, thin cover, infinite square miles of maddening Gamble Oak, and dead-end drainages that one must re-ascend to get home. That said, it was the best powder of the year! The price was a delaminated top-sheet of a ski, with numerous deep shots to the bases - but no core shots. The excellent skiing, albeit in small doses, was well worth damaged skis (they are my old Voile ‘rock skis,’ used when I expect severe damage).

I skied low elevations, between 5,500 and 7,200 feet, and the S-SW aspects were totally bare just a week ago up to over 7k feet. We had a big dump of snow two days prior and every slope was now covered in the glorious white of colder climes. Plus, and this was a big motivating factor, the avalanche danger at higher elevations was considerable, the Central Wasatch saw numerous near misses after the last storm, several full burials, one sending a skier to intensive care. So all the factors aligned, avalanche danger higher up and the lower slopes were now covered. I had to act fast because when the sun comes out the low elevation snow will evaporate in seconds. The Gods were telling me now is the time to go do some low elevation grunge skiing. As for avalanches, I reasoned the low elevations where I was headed did not have the deep layers of old snow, where unstable slabs form, because much of the ground was completely bare before this week’s dump. When I got up to the City Creek Cirque I found strange snow-cover, the depths were erratic, 48 inches at 7k feet on the NE aspects, but barely 8 inches on the S-SW aspects. From my transition spot at the base of the City Creek Cirque, to the open face just 50-feet away, the snow-depth quickly changed from deep cover to barely hidden rocks, the SW aspects were barely covered. It was strange to ski an east facing slope and get face-shots (ok, I embellish, knee-shots), then just 50 feet over to the skin track, on a south-facing slope, as I was skinning back up my poles were constantly hitting rock, my skins often gripping on weeds and mud. Oh but the NE aspects were wonderful! Deep snow, offering idiot-proof, soft snow turns, with no sign what-so-ever of instabilities, no avalanches. On the steeper slopes my turns did kick-off some sizable sloughs, big enough to de-cleat me if I was in the line of fire, but I saw no slab activity anywhere. As you can guess, with the variable depths I hit a bunch of rocks to go with my delaminated ski, but the ski damage is a reasonable price to pay for solitude.

CCC (City Creek Cirque).

More City Creek Cirque.

With the cliff band near the top of the ridge, the slope reminds me of the glacial cirques so common in the Central Wasatch. With some imagination I can see where a glacier pulled away from the ridge, leaving the  cliffs exposed once the glacier melted, like in Maybird, White and Red Pine, Hogum, etc. all above Little Cottonwood Canyon. Of course this is just the fairy tale meanders of my mind, City Creek has NO glacial cirques. It did not have recent glaciers like the Central Wasatch did (15k years ago). 

Fun, soft turns on the NE aspects.

The Central Wasatch always looks better than my little grunge shots, until you see the parking lots, skin tracks and the tracked out “back-country” ski runs. 

Conglomerate rock everywhere between Mueller Park all the way south to Parley’s Canyon.

To add insult to injury I lost the tail clip from my skin, the strap is to hold the skin in place, not to hold the delamination. 

Tough skin track.

Repaired the delamination with left-over caulk from a recent bathroom remodel. The purists are surely 'shitting-a-brick' for my NOT using J-B Weld, but hey, the silicone is waterproof, flexible, free (or at least a sunk cost) and mold-free, and I ski so slow the mold gets thick, so a perfect choice on every front.