Due to the sheer volume of pictures, this is another posting split between two -- the second half of the photos is in this topic -- click here to view them.
The cast of today's misadventures changed dramatically at the last minute. Originally Bob and I hatched plans two nights ago, but Marc_C couldn't join us because he's a wuss -- he mumbled something about an art show and the west desert...I dunno. Then Dale called, and he and Pat were coming along. Then Bob called last night and bumped our meeting plans back to Sunday, as he mumbled something about work. Someone's got to teach that boy some priorities. :wink:
So in the end it was Dale, Pat and myself. Dale and I made arrangements to drop his car at Alta's Wildcat base area. I took care to instruct him to drop Pat and their gear off at Snowbird first, for I have a two-seater. I arrived right at 8:30 sharp at Wildcat, only to find not one, but two people sitting on the tailgate of an SUV amongst several other cars full of skiers departing on their hike up the hill. #-o After some good-natured ribbing we decided that Pat could sit on Dale's lap for the short ride to Snowbird, but then I looked in the back of their truck. #-o Skis, boots, packs, and various other paraphenalia. ](*,) So, it was two cars down to Snowbird, two cars back up to Alta, and my car back down to Snowbird before we got underway. Friggin' Wisconsinites!!
No matter -- this was going to be another two-run day. Another two-run, four-hour day, that is. And throughout it all, we would let our skis slide upon no more than 200 feet of officially in-bounds terrain.
Very few people were venturing out the Cirque Traverse gate, probably spooked by the lack of snow on the lower mountain. We thus had Jaws -- and in fact the entire Cirque -- all to ourselves, once we got to it that is. From the ascending tram cabin we could see that the melting snow had receded away from the ridgeline -- while the skiing remained fabulous, an awful lot of snow melted this week. I don't know what it was up there, but it was in the 90s in the Salt Lake Valley literally all week, with bright sun and torrential afternoon thunderstorms. As a result, skiing any of the Upper Cirque chutes required a bit of a scramble down a talus-filled pitch to reach the snow. Great Scott's entrance appeared to be the ugliest, and frankly I've skied that line enough this spring/summer, anyway. So, Jaws it was.
It was delightful...the 9:20 am corn was just about perfect on the east-northeast facing aspect. Tight turns in the throat, now much narrower, and big fast arcs on the apron. We paused at Some Sunny Spot, reflecting upon how lucky we were to be enjoying this in late June.
Negotiating the lower mountain is now a much greater exercise in creativity. Of course, this isn't officially open terrain, anyway -- you're supposed to ski Little Cloud all day and download on the Tram when you're done. Aside from a couple of spots where we had to gingerly step between one patch of snow and another, and one single stretch of maybe 50 feet of bare ground, we were able to ski continuously to the same spot as last weekend, a couple of hundred feet from the Tram Plaza. This required local knowledge, however, for there was only one convoluted route by which you could do this, and no one else was around to show you the way. Make a wrong choice, and you'd be downhiking some rather steep bare ground in ski boots, sometimes for a considerable distance.
We scarfed up a quick snack on the Tram Plaza deck while we waited for the next lift cabin to depart. Sensing that the time was near, we gathered our belongings and headed for the tram dock.
"So," Pat inquired, "what's our plan for the next run?"
Heh. Heh. <snort> She said "plan." :lol:
We stepped out of the tram atop Hidden Peak, clicked into our skis, and pushed off for a half-dozen turns before banging a right turn onto Chip's Run, now through a backcountry gate. I paused only long enough to snap a photo of the excavation site for the new tunnel that will connect Peruvian Gulch and Mineral Basin, then skated away to the low point on the ridgeline connecting Hidden Peak and Mount Baldy. Here, able to ascend no further on skis, I clicked out of my bindings and began to load them onto my pack. Dale was already some 50 yards ahead of me as Pat skied up behind me.
"So, where are we hiking?" she asked.
I pointed silently to the summit of Mt. Baldy.
"All the way to the top?" :shock:
We plodded along, periodically exchanging the lead with members of another group of 3. They were the only others we'd see, however, for the rest of the day. In fact, when they pushed off from the summit ahead of us, we would never see them again. We paused again to take in the views from the top, thankful that last Saturday's ferocious winds did not appear for a return engagement.
We peered down into Little Chute, looking much sketchier than a week earlier, so we once again continued down to Main Chute. Slightly narrower than last week, and with much more debris dropped from the cliffs on either side sitting in the snow's surface, I pushed off from the lip as Dale snapped a series of photos.
The snow was heavy and wet in the east-facing slot -- it was now high noon -- but an absolute delight nonetheless. A small crevasse is now starting to form where the snow in the gully is pulling away from the snow atop the ridgeline. Looking across Collins Gulch, Alta's High Traverse is now completely bare from Sunspot all the way across to Piss Pass, even though it was skiable a mere week ago.
We popped out onto the apron again and, finding the traverse over to Tombstone unskiable, once again laid down big arcs on Harold's that left perma-grins on our faces. We traversed right, past Harold's Cabin and across Mambo to Spring Valley where the damage from January's avalanche originating up on Baldy was apparent. Large trees were strewn everywhere, now lying on top of the snow surface. We kept working our way down and right, conscious that we needed to stay to the right side of the Watson Shelter construction area to avoid an unnecessary walk, and found ourselves on the broad snowfields of Lower Jitterbug, perfect timing in the day to harvest the corn on that northwest-facing slope. Down, and into the natural drainage below Race Course, we found uninterrupted snow before we had to take off our skis to cross the plowed Collins work road and continue skiing down Corkscrew to within 40 yards of the Collins Chair loading station.
It was yet another amazing June day. Bob and I had originally planned to ski Main Chute tomorrow, then skin up to Germania Pass and head out the High T for a top-to-bottom High Rustler run back to a spotted car. We hadn't planned on 75% of the High T being a walk across bare ground, however, so those plans will need to be changed. As I said, it's shocking how much snow melted out this week. A full 25% of the High Baldy traverse we used a week ago to access High Baldy Triangle/Colossus is completely gone. Today's the first day that I felt that depressing "it's almost over" feeling. The fat lady's not singing yet, but she's warming up.
Our timing was good, for the morning sunshine was already giving way to thickening clouds approaching from the west as we made our way down Little Cottonwood Canyon. In fact, as I type this, a microburst from the afternoon's first thunderstorm is just now arriving.
Part 1 of today's photos are below. Part 2 of today's photos are in this topic -- click here to view them.
The cast of today's misadventures changed dramatically at the last minute. Originally Bob and I hatched plans two nights ago, but Marc_C couldn't join us because he's a wuss -- he mumbled something about an art show and the west desert...I dunno. Then Dale called, and he and Pat were coming along. Then Bob called last night and bumped our meeting plans back to Sunday, as he mumbled something about work. Someone's got to teach that boy some priorities. :wink:
So in the end it was Dale, Pat and myself. Dale and I made arrangements to drop his car at Alta's Wildcat base area. I took care to instruct him to drop Pat and their gear off at Snowbird first, for I have a two-seater. I arrived right at 8:30 sharp at Wildcat, only to find not one, but two people sitting on the tailgate of an SUV amongst several other cars full of skiers departing on their hike up the hill. #-o After some good-natured ribbing we decided that Pat could sit on Dale's lap for the short ride to Snowbird, but then I looked in the back of their truck. #-o Skis, boots, packs, and various other paraphenalia. ](*,) So, it was two cars down to Snowbird, two cars back up to Alta, and my car back down to Snowbird before we got underway. Friggin' Wisconsinites!!
No matter -- this was going to be another two-run day. Another two-run, four-hour day, that is. And throughout it all, we would let our skis slide upon no more than 200 feet of officially in-bounds terrain.
Very few people were venturing out the Cirque Traverse gate, probably spooked by the lack of snow on the lower mountain. We thus had Jaws -- and in fact the entire Cirque -- all to ourselves, once we got to it that is. From the ascending tram cabin we could see that the melting snow had receded away from the ridgeline -- while the skiing remained fabulous, an awful lot of snow melted this week. I don't know what it was up there, but it was in the 90s in the Salt Lake Valley literally all week, with bright sun and torrential afternoon thunderstorms. As a result, skiing any of the Upper Cirque chutes required a bit of a scramble down a talus-filled pitch to reach the snow. Great Scott's entrance appeared to be the ugliest, and frankly I've skied that line enough this spring/summer, anyway. So, Jaws it was.
It was delightful...the 9:20 am corn was just about perfect on the east-northeast facing aspect. Tight turns in the throat, now much narrower, and big fast arcs on the apron. We paused at Some Sunny Spot, reflecting upon how lucky we were to be enjoying this in late June.
Negotiating the lower mountain is now a much greater exercise in creativity. Of course, this isn't officially open terrain, anyway -- you're supposed to ski Little Cloud all day and download on the Tram when you're done. Aside from a couple of spots where we had to gingerly step between one patch of snow and another, and one single stretch of maybe 50 feet of bare ground, we were able to ski continuously to the same spot as last weekend, a couple of hundred feet from the Tram Plaza. This required local knowledge, however, for there was only one convoluted route by which you could do this, and no one else was around to show you the way. Make a wrong choice, and you'd be downhiking some rather steep bare ground in ski boots, sometimes for a considerable distance.
We scarfed up a quick snack on the Tram Plaza deck while we waited for the next lift cabin to depart. Sensing that the time was near, we gathered our belongings and headed for the tram dock.
"So," Pat inquired, "what's our plan for the next run?"
Heh. Heh. <snort> She said "plan." :lol:
We stepped out of the tram atop Hidden Peak, clicked into our skis, and pushed off for a half-dozen turns before banging a right turn onto Chip's Run, now through a backcountry gate. I paused only long enough to snap a photo of the excavation site for the new tunnel that will connect Peruvian Gulch and Mineral Basin, then skated away to the low point on the ridgeline connecting Hidden Peak and Mount Baldy. Here, able to ascend no further on skis, I clicked out of my bindings and began to load them onto my pack. Dale was already some 50 yards ahead of me as Pat skied up behind me.
"So, where are we hiking?" she asked.
I pointed silently to the summit of Mt. Baldy.
"All the way to the top?" :shock:
We plodded along, periodically exchanging the lead with members of another group of 3. They were the only others we'd see, however, for the rest of the day. In fact, when they pushed off from the summit ahead of us, we would never see them again. We paused again to take in the views from the top, thankful that last Saturday's ferocious winds did not appear for a return engagement.
We peered down into Little Chute, looking much sketchier than a week earlier, so we once again continued down to Main Chute. Slightly narrower than last week, and with much more debris dropped from the cliffs on either side sitting in the snow's surface, I pushed off from the lip as Dale snapped a series of photos.
The snow was heavy and wet in the east-facing slot -- it was now high noon -- but an absolute delight nonetheless. A small crevasse is now starting to form where the snow in the gully is pulling away from the snow atop the ridgeline. Looking across Collins Gulch, Alta's High Traverse is now completely bare from Sunspot all the way across to Piss Pass, even though it was skiable a mere week ago.
We popped out onto the apron again and, finding the traverse over to Tombstone unskiable, once again laid down big arcs on Harold's that left perma-grins on our faces. We traversed right, past Harold's Cabin and across Mambo to Spring Valley where the damage from January's avalanche originating up on Baldy was apparent. Large trees were strewn everywhere, now lying on top of the snow surface. We kept working our way down and right, conscious that we needed to stay to the right side of the Watson Shelter construction area to avoid an unnecessary walk, and found ourselves on the broad snowfields of Lower Jitterbug, perfect timing in the day to harvest the corn on that northwest-facing slope. Down, and into the natural drainage below Race Course, we found uninterrupted snow before we had to take off our skis to cross the plowed Collins work road and continue skiing down Corkscrew to within 40 yards of the Collins Chair loading station.
It was yet another amazing June day. Bob and I had originally planned to ski Main Chute tomorrow, then skin up to Germania Pass and head out the High T for a top-to-bottom High Rustler run back to a spotted car. We hadn't planned on 75% of the High T being a walk across bare ground, however, so those plans will need to be changed. As I said, it's shocking how much snow melted out this week. A full 25% of the High Baldy traverse we used a week ago to access High Baldy Triangle/Colossus is completely gone. Today's the first day that I felt that depressing "it's almost over" feeling. The fat lady's not singing yet, but she's warming up.
Our timing was good, for the morning sunshine was already giving way to thickening clouds approaching from the west as we made our way down Little Cottonwood Canyon. In fact, as I type this, a microburst from the afternoon's first thunderstorm is just now arriving.
Part 1 of today's photos are below. Part 2 of today's photos are in this topic -- click here to view them.
Attachments
-
09 snowbird tunnel excavation 050625.jpg -
08 snowbird lower mt creativity 050625.jpg -
07 snowbird grass skiing 050625.jpg -
06 snowbird upper cirque 050625.jpg -
05 snowbird pat dale jaws 050625.jpg -
04 snowbird mid-cirque 050625.jpg -
03 snowbird hiking sun 050625.jpg -
02 snowbird twins 050625.jpg -
01 snowbird jaws receding snow 050625.jpg
