Mark, Larga Vida en Mi Corazon! March 21, 2022

This has been a frustrating year. I’ve skied less this year than any in the last 25 years. I blame it on the re- emergence of a harsh, arrogant, self-serving human instinct that is now all the rage across America. A bad element of humanity that was pushed down as unacceptable just a few years ago is now acceptable and encouraged by certain powers of society. In Utah it has created a strange inconsistency in spirituality and politics, yet the majority of Utahns continued to combine their spirituality with bull-shit politics, which has me mystified and wondering how that juxtaposition is reconciled in their minds? At some point one wonders just where they (me) belong?  

What does this have to do with skiing? My employer of 30+ years fully embraced this ‘me first’ mentality and, in an attempt to increase share value, consolidated offices to increase bottom-line performance by 1/1000 of 1%. I lost my 30-yr career due to my position being transferred to Houston. Texans tell me that  Houston is the 'Paris of the West’ (hemisphere not America), unicorns and rainbows around every corner, the women all are beautiful and the men stand straight and tall, yet, and I say this with absolutely NO disrespect, face it, Houston is for fat cowboys and career shit-heads who think the purpose of life is to only make a dime. I just could not see myself ever living in Houston. In early 2020 I said “NO thanks" and took another job in SLC. That new job came with a significant cut in pay and with a significant cut in vacation, and, believe me, going backward from eight weeks of PTO to just two weeks is tougher than the loss of $$s. In addition, at the same time my wife developed some serious health issues which made work very difficult, so, in early 2020, we were slammed with a perfect shit-show, bind-sided with health uncertainties and a double-hit to our income. To make up for the loss of income, in addition to my day job, I took on some freelance work requiring time during evenings and weekends, and thus, my ski-time has been severely diminished. 

Incidentally, now, after 2.5 years of testing the ‘me first’ theory, the share value of my ex-employer did not change. Other than the typical mirroring of the normal ebb and flow oil & gas prices, shares have remained stagnant. 

I’m not skiing nearly enough but I still try to get out in short bursts when a few hours open. It got cold this weekend and it snowed up high, very wintery for this snow starved winter, so today (Monday, March 21, 2022) after working half the day I headed up Bountiful Ridge to ski some of that new, cold snow.

Yesterday’s new snow was powdery on the skin up, and it looks powdery here, but, when skiing down, it felt sloppy, grabby and trippy. The hard base was becoming unsupportable in the afternoon sun. Look at the last photos (end of post) for evidence of my ugly turns.

KPF, the deepest, least brushy I’ve seen it this year.

Snow stake rock, still mostly buried.

109cm (43in) at Rudy’s Flat. 

Skinner up the old route from Rudy’s up to the ridge, the open slope seen here it the ski run I call Tele Hill (aka Face-plant Hill). It’s on the west side of the ridge above Rudy’s Flat, at the SW end (lowest end) of Bountiful Ridge, the terminating end of Bountiful Ridge. 25 years ago this was the only way I’d skin up, but over time I got smarter and, to minimize trail-breaking, I started putting my skin-track up near the hill I planned to ski that day. Now in the spring I go back to this route. When the snow is consolidated and trail-breaking is not an issue, I go back to Face-Plant hill because it’s the shortest route up the steepest face below the ridge and the shortness minimizes the crampon work often required when conditions transform to hard, crusted snow.

A quick, cold storm yesterday left about 3 inches of dry powder on top of the hard crust. I worked the morning, I didn’t start hiking until early afternoon, and I was racing the sun . . .  and I lost. The snow was dry at the start, still powdery while skinning with my ski slipping when on this steep side-hill (40 degrees) due to the powder not sticking to the crust (I forgot crampons), but by the time I topped out to ski the powder had turned to cement and the crust now grabby. My turns shown in the last photos are erratic and sloppy and I’m blaming the hot sun.   

City Creek Cirque way below. The south faces melting fast. 

Along the ridge headed toward Rectangle Peak, hidden by the Mahoganys on the right. 

Blacks Peak barely visible middle-right, the white spot just above the brush.

City Creek Canyon on the right, North Canyon on the left, my skin track seemingly pointing to the City Creek Cirque, the distant face barely discernible here because it’s so small. It’s not really a valid ski destination when one can ski Bountiful Ridge.  

Oquirhs through the legs, view SW down City Creek Canyon.

Busting through the cornice at the top of Scott Cutler’s Yellow Coat (ski run out of view to my right). 

The toughest challenge all day was pulling my damn skins . . . 

 . . . so for the next one I removed the ski first. I may have been born stupid but it’s getting better. When skins are new and the glue is clean, and there’s no wax on my skis, those things are welded. The sticky is perfect when they hold onto the ski while hiking yet are easily removed without dismounting from the skis. 

Wearing my brothers shirt, which I inherited 28 years ago (tomorrow) after his passing. I’ve taken it on every ski outing since he died and I’m shocked it is still holding together. It is full of holes and it is threadbare, it offers almost no insulation, but it brings warmth in indescribable ways. 
Mark, larga vida en mi corazón!

Wow, I’ve never seen such ugly turns, even from my tele days. These photos were taken a week after I put-in these tracks and a week of sun didn’t make these turns any less ugly.

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.