Cowboy, City Creek Cirque, & Crows Foot, February 3, 2023

First time to share a skin track with a Cowboy on horseback . . .

Just below the steep scree-slope on the Hidden Lake Trail, the Cowboy tied his horse to the scrub and booted to the top of Stonehenge Peak. When I got to the top he was scoping lower City Creek Canyon, looking for Elk, wintering low during this deep winter. He was a very nice guy, the way we all should be, quick with a smile and a "hello.” A bit older than me, and very genuine and friendly, like an older brother I hadn't seen in years. He said he has lived in Centerville since a kid, but he didn’t know my name when I mentioned the Reeder’s have lived in Bountiful since the early 1960’s. He said he likely knew my older brother Stuart, who was in the Bountiful High Marching Band in the early 1970’s. The Cowboy said he was in the Viewmont band at the same time and the school's bands often interacted. I couldn’t see the Elk but he handed me his binoculars and told me where to look, and sure enough, there were about 50 Elk near the bottom of City Creek Canyon, just above the road on the warmer, southern aspect (north side) of the canyon.  

The Cowboy booting up Stonehenge Peak, next to my ski tracks from three days ago. 

What are YOU lookin at? That horse glared at me as I skinned by. I kept my distance, remembering my Mom’s lecture when I was a kid when we went to the family farm for a reunion, "never stand behind a horse, they’ll kick at you if they can’t see you.” What does an Australian lady know about horses anyway? But I believed her, and now, maybe 56 years later, I still hear her Aussie voice, lecturing on horsemanship.    

Seems like every ski day this year was gray and overcast, and cold and windy. The started out sunny and bright (horse pics) but it quickly went gray and overcast.

Two cameras but a big differenece in how they handle bad light. This photo and the other self portraits were taken with a GoPro Max (yellow hue), most of the others came from with a Canon G7X Mark III (blue/gray). Both were set on ‘auto.' When I tried to play with the exposure the photos were even worse, either totally washed out or way darker, so I evnetually just them on ‘auto.’ I even carried my drone today, but the light was so bad it never came out of the pack. The GoPro is much better with contrast but the Canon has much sharper focus across the frame, but only with plenty of light. 

One day I need to drop that cliff and I may have missed my chance because the base was deep this year. Normally the base is only one or two feet deep and that cliff is bigger than it looks, 15-20 feet depending where you drop, so I haven’t trusted the landing. I should have done it today, but this spot is strangely remote and gets no traffic (why I ski it). If I snapped a femur my body would still be there . . . or not, just my skies would remain, the Coyotes and critters would have scattered me in a matter of days.   

Weird cobbled rock along the skin-track out of City Creek Cirque, consisting of small stones cemented within a sedimentary rock, a reddish, soft concrete. The rock is soft, it cracks and breaks much easier than the Granite (Quartz Monzonite, Igneous) of Little Cottonwood and Bell's Canyons or the Quartzite (sandstone metamorphosed under heat and pressure into a harder rock) of Big Cottonwood Canyon. The cobbled conglomerate above Bountiful and City Creek Canyon (called Knight Conglomerate?) stretches from South Davis County on the north to Emigration Canyon on the south and East Canyons and Echo Canyon on the East. The conglomerate cliffs are full of small caves and a few arches, and it calves boulders like séracs off an icefall of a hanging glacier. I see huge boulders everywhere, broken away from its parent rock by a few inches, teetering and waiting for the next freeze/thaw before calving off. Makes me nervous to ski below them. I see slides and rock-fall frequently near those cliffs.   

One of the detached blocks near the top of City Creek Cirque, sure to break free sometime soon, hopefully not when I’m underneath.  (Photo taken May 15, 2023.) This one is about 8 ft high x 5 ft deep x 10 ft wide. I ski or run past this spot a hundred times a year and that crack is getting wider. A year ago it was a quarter-inch wide. Freeze/thaw/tree roots, all conspiring to push this off the edge.   

Skinning back up out of City Creek Cirque, along the ridge. I didn’t realize there is a huge drop just off that ridge when I first skied this a number of years ago. Big, cobbled cliffs drop away just a few feet off the other side. And those cliffs are everywhere. They don’t look like much from the city, but at close range they are intimidating, some are over 200 feet high, and dropping away over blind roll-overs. What looks like a fun, steep ski slope, with a convex drop hiding the base, is actually a big cliff hiding the lower end of the run. With hard, icy conditions, one could slide for life off the edge. Safe route-finding is often overlooked in foothill skiing, City Creek and the Bountiful foothills should not be taken lightly. If this was 2,000 feet higher and got the deep snow of Farmington Canyon, this wood be a cliff-dropping mecca.   

Entry into City Creek Cirque.

So gray I could hardly see my first-run tracks down CC Cirque.

Two runs and skin track. Short, perhaps not worth the effort, but still sweet. 

City Creek Cirque had about a 48 inch base, but while skinning back up, on a slope a few degrees to the north on a southern aspect, the base was much thinner, maybe 15 inches.  

Second run skinner. Just over that ridge is a 100 foot drop.

Too scared to drop the cliff I traversed over to a small notch in the cliff. Last summer I hiked over for a closer look and was surprised to see that the notch was almost vertical, and bigger than it looks in winter, about 20 feet. It’s amazing how rock fills in quickly with a little snow.

Skinning out of the Cirque, my tracks and second-run skinner barely visible in the flat light.

My only photo of my exit run down the Crows Foot. The light was too gray and my photos are bad. With no contrast the turns are barely visible, but look hard, and you can see my turns down through the Mt. Mahogany.

Out of sight are my turns down the Crows Foot Couloir, a steep notch through the cobbled cliffs. It’s only skiable under deep conditions due a vertical drop midway down, so it takes time for snow to fill the drop. Skiable maybe once a year - at best - and only after a big dump. This year was an absolute anomaly, the Couloir was skiable from January through mid-March. Some years it is never skiable unless one is will to drop a 15 foot cliff onto a thin snow landing on a cobbled-rocky base. I’m too old to break any more bones, I ski it only when it's deep.

Today I skied down the upper Crow’s Foot Left Toe, then left and down the Couloir, then back over to the lower Left Toe, seen here through the Mahoganies.  After skiing the Crows Foot I then skinned along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail to get back to my truck.  Before the BST was built there was a long bushwhack to get out of this place, which left me wondering why I kept going back, and I did it way too much. I did it often when avy conditions were dicey on bigger terrain, or I just need some adventure. Cobble and Oak brush is mostly adventure with a few good turns here and there.  

 

Dude Peak, January 30, 2023

 

Still catching up on the blog. Blogs are soooo passé, nobody reads this thing and I tried to walk away. God knows my family runs-and-hides when I start talking back country skiing, it’s an annoying Dad/Husband thing, but I’m realizing this is a history of my passions. If nothing else it serves my own purpose. I can go back and relive great memories anytime, anywhere.

I’m posting this on Friday, May 5, 2023. We have Covid in our home, Kara has a severe case, laid flat-in-bed now for three days, with a high fever, massive body aches, congestion and her OX-SAT levels are near the threshold (low 90’s) where we might need to go to the emergency room. I’m still testing negative and I hide out in our basement to avoid the same shit. I wear my construction respirator when I’m near her. 

My wife’s brother (my idiot brother-in-law) nearly died from Covid a year ago, so genetics are not in her favor Covid-wise. His OX-SAT levels were in the mid 80’s and he refused to go to the hospital, claiming he would be fine because he had had a “priesthood blessing” that proclaimed he would “recover quickly to continue  the work of the lord,” and he fervently insisted that going to the hospital would show a "lack of faith." Did I mention he is an IDIOT! He nearly died due to his extreme, whacked-out religious beliefs. He refused to go to the hospital until his grown children quite literally physically forced him into the car and drove him to the ER. A good thing they did because he nearly died. He spent two weeks in the ICU and the Doctor said he would not have lived through the night if he had not gone to the hospital when he did. He was intubated and put on huge doses of antibiotics because his body was full of Sepsis due to his low OX-SAT levels. His organs were systematically shutting down due to low oxygen level, hence the Sepsis. He is still in terrible health due to his bout with Covid. He’s on oxygen 100% of the time, which he never was before. He is weak, he can’t even walk around the block, when before Covid he was quite active, golfing daily and rode a bike regularly. Now he can’t taste a damn thing and his mind seems blown, like he had a stroke (low OX levels?). Who would want this? Not me.

Several of my coworkers are total nut-job Republican-deniers. They have whined at length how mask-wearing and vaccines are a left-wing government plot to control your mind and money, so it was hysterical watching them stampede all-over themselves to get away from me when I announced I had been exposed to Covid. Perhaps their shit-head conspiracies theories about masks, vaccines and Covid in general are just that, shit-head conspiracies?? When push comes to shove they don’t want to get sick either. Apparently they do believe it’s real. After they stampeded away they immediately tattled on me to the boss and he sent me home for the week. Yes, it was reckless to potentially expose them to Covid, but, based upon the toxic political climate at work, it was even more reckless - to my career - to call-in-sick due to the C-word (Covid, not what you’re thinking). 

And just to be clear, I HATE politics in every form and fashion. Anyone who does a deep-dive into any political party or any politician is simply a lost soul. They have sold their souls to the Devil out of vanity, power, a gang mindset, and an attempt to look intelligent (the pinnacle of oxymoron). No, I am not a Democrat but I’m definitely NOT a Republican. Living in Utah I am constantly confronted with hysterical right-wing Gumbies who deem me a liberal and anti-Christian (WTF!) if I don’t like their politics, and it gets old. I can’t go to church anymore because it is largely just a weekly Republican caucus, and I can’t serve two masters. Why would I pretend to revere Christ all the while pushing a political agenda? Leave me out, I’ll ski on Sunday thank you. I can only conclude, based on Utah politics, that the "stupid pendulum" has been stuck on the far right now for far too long, but the left is not much better. Quite frankly, I have more respect for drug-cartels and prostitutes than I do for politicians and political parties. They (druggies and tarts), at least, are truthful, they do exactly what they say they will do. On the other hand, politicians will promise you the world all the while motioning to their aids to slit your throat from behind.  

So, here I am, May 5, 2023, sitting in the basement, keeping my distance from my wife, and looking at ski photos from this winter. It has been hot this week, hitting the 80’s, so our A/C is running it’s guts out to keep Kara comfortable in her fevered-Covid state, and I’m shivering in the basement. Worse, looking at these photos from skiing Dude Peak on January 30th make me even colder. That day was the coldest I’ve ever been. It was absolutely frigid. My cheap, key-fob thermometer said it was below zero, plus there was a light breeze that cut right through me. I always take extra base layer to change out when wet with sweat, but today I put on every layer that I had and it still was not enough. I could not stop shivering, my toes and fingers had no feeling and I almost felt panicky knowing that even a minor equipment failure could be dangerous. Despite the cold it was a beautiful day, mostly blue sky, sunshine and sparkly air with the ice crystal floating in the cold air. I planned to ski City Creek Cirque and then several laps on the Crows Foot, but it was just too cold, I ended up just tagging Dude Peak then simply skiing back down the Hidden Lake Trail, then home to a hot shower. Many ski days fade into a jumble mass of memories with other similar ski days, but not this day. It was one that will last in my memory for the extreme cold, and that cold reminds me of the details, the great snow, the beautiful white mountains and the jewels in the air.       

Evening Foothill Wandering, January 11, 2023

Deep unbroken snow, mid 20s with an icy wind. It never fails, go to the hills after work to exorcise the day's demons . . . 

Wasatch Backcountry Skiing, B-Ridge, January 7, 2023

Not a lot of time, take it when life isn’t looking . . . 

Great snow today, about 10 inches of 3% density powder on a supportable base, but I’ve never seen so many skiers on Bountiful Ridge. Santa must have been very generous this year, there were a lot of newbies experimenting with their new toys, and it’s easy to spot the newbies, which is always good for a big laugh. That sounds elitist but who can resist a laugh when extremely obvious common-sense mountain awareness doesn’t even begin to register under that sparkling new Dynafit TLT helmet? Is it just me or is everyone 'mouth-agape' to see someone skin straight up a 39 degrees slope, in a huge puffy-down jacket, drenching every layer with sweat (way over-dressed), and, when their skins fail because the slope is too steep and they’re too stupid to do a kick turn and put in switches, they remove their skis and try booting in hip-deep snow? Who does that? Stupid newbies that's who, because every one is now on Insta and TikTok spraying about abut how bad-ass they are, and everyone skinning is Guerrier and everyone riding ski lifts are pure shyte-heads. Yes, funny, but also really sad. 

It’s always crowded up there during the Holidays and for a few weeks after, but today was off the charts. The Wasatch typically has a two to three week spell of high pressure and unseasonably warm temps during January, so the deteriorating snow conditions scare away the crowds from low elevation haunts such as Bountiful Ridge. But it never stopped snowing this winter, guaranteeing good snow when in a typical year Bountiful Ridge has long periods of shit, when Grizzly Gulch is perfect. All that quality snow helped bring in the crowds. This is a small area, it isn’t covered in any guide books, but it is now everyones ‘Plan B’ when there is no parking at Mill D or White Pine. Effectively it’s now a mainstream destination on the SLC backcountry ski circuit. What the hell? Why? Yes, the Wasatch front has over 2 million residents, so it’s not really surprising that everything is now crowded, but why here? It requires a long, brushy approach, it sits at a low elevation, it has bad westerly aspects so it’s prone to sun-crusting or Bountiful cement, and it’s small, so the marque lines get skied out quickly, usually within hours of a new dump, so it is still a bit puzzling why it’s now so crowded? The exponentially expanding population is reason enough, but other factors certainly helped advertise this pathetic, girly, little backwater of nothingness: Strava, the Powder Project and pure word-of-mouth have all contributed to the crowding of this once solitary area.

But today was good. Yes too crowded for my liking, but when there’s a crowd you go to the hidden splendors, where I still I found a few untracked lines

I forgot my good camera, so limited to only the 360 POV camera, which can catch some gems, but mostly garbage. Here are a few OK shots . . .