Snowbasin, UT 2/2/2014

Day 40: Heading north.

I haven't skied anywhere in the Ogden Valley since last season, and with a foot of new from Friday's storm and another 4" yesterday, it seemed like the perfect time to visit Snowbasin.

It was:



A bunch of us made the trek north today: Bobby Danger, AmyZ, Tony Crocker, Skiace, tseeb and yours truly. The day was cloudy with light snowfall for much of the day, so when I saw TheOtherAmy's photo from skinning Flagstaff Mt. in LCC I was surprised to see deep blue skies over there.





We loaded the Needles Gondola just after the opening bell and headed straight to Strawberry where we added tseeb's friend Dave after a second trip via The Walrus and Philpot Ridge.





Back up the gondola and we headed out the gate and beyond the boundary to the Cathedral, finding untracked and lightly tracked. In a word, spectacular!



By the time we got back to the bottom of Strawberry a 30-second line had formed. Feeling crowded (relatively speaking only, of course!) it was time to leave, which we did via DeMoisey Bowl.



Once again, more untracked -- once we got past a six-foot avi crown, that is.







Before lunch we skied onto the John Paul chair, got our very own private beer can on the Mt. Allen Tram, and left the ski area via its northern boundary rope into Upper Coldwater Canyon. Completely untracked, we descended as far as we could go before it was time to circumnavigate No Name Peak and get ourselves into a position that we could still return to the ski area.











These long, looooonnnnng runs are epic adventures that take an hour or more per run, but do not try this at home unless you know what you're doing and where you're going, as folks frequently get lost and spend the night -- or worse -- in this area.

We dined a late lunch upon our return to Earl's Lodge, and I have to admit that while Deer Valley's food previously had nothing on Snowbasin's that's no longer the case. I first noticed some subtle changes last season, but this winter it's even more obvious via a change in menu. For example, the prime rib has now been replaced by a French Dip sandwich. The rest of the menu has been dumbed down, too. It's still very good, but it's just not the special experience that it once was, and that's a shame.

Coldwater Canyon was so good the first time that it just begged to be repeated after lunch. And it was just as good the second time as the first.











Instead of Middle Finger, this time Tony, Skiace and I dropped from the ridge via the Pinky, while the others continued even further down the ridge. While they all called it a day once we returned to the base, I went back up the Needles Gondi for one final run with my friend Colleen, who's now a Snowbasin passholder. She was hosting a couple of friends from Atlanta and we did a cruiser down Dan's Run/Bear Hollow/School Hill to end the day at 3:45 long after most folks had left to head to Super Bowl parties.

Snowbasin has never failed to deliver. I've said it before, and I'll likely still say it again because I never seem to follow my own advice: I need to get up there more often.

Admin lapping up the powder on No Name

admin":2rpiitpo said:

I've said it before, and I'll likely still say it again because I never seem to follow my own advice: I need to get up there more often.

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And we practically had to twist his arm to get him up there this time.

Tony Crocker":1ergfwil said:

admin":1ergfwil said:

I've said it before, and I'll likely still say it again because I never seem to follow my own advice: I need to get up there more often.

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And we practically had to twist his arm to get him up there this time.

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Absolutely untrue. I was committed by Saturday afternoon and up until 6:15 a.m. today it looked like I might have been heading to Snowbasin alone.

Good stuff. I skied 800 vert in the back yard today. Wish I was there

Where did you lose Dwore?

Day..41.. rdwore didn't have it budgeted . would have liked to have him there but ! must have been very busy on sat. the place for the most part was skied up within the boundries . skiing was very good but not like what no-name had to offer. and please no one should ever try to achieve the lines that are described in this t.r. without someone for sure knowing where they are going spending a night out there is a real possibility ! the upper reaches of coldwater canyon have ample coverage but going much further down coldwater canyon to the last chance pass , this season would more than likely become nothing more than a very whippy ride to ogden canyon road which is still a good 2,000 plus vertical feet in descent . we actually skied the first three or four hundred verts. of hells canyon before braking hard right to coldwater . that,s probably the least snow i've ever skied down through the middle finger at any point of any season ! super fun day everyone made it back alive only with a few slight scrapes from the whippies at the bottom . :-"

I have a couple of more pictures to add from this day at Snowbasin and am going to add some commentary and maybe controversy that I think is relevant with recent questioning of Tony Crocker's powder skiing questionable terrain in Zermatt by himself. Admin and Bobby Danger both warned above about the possibility of spending the night or worse happening if you did not know where you were going OB at Snowbasin. And Bobby very explicitly told us not to go past him in a couple of places. But I would have hated to have been involved in a post-mortem (very harsh I know) if Middle Finger slid on us. I do not have any avalanche training, only the following observations.

We tried be safe and ski it one at a time, but we also had the following that we discussed:
-Lessening avalanche danger, but I think rating was moderate.
-Only one person with avalanche gear. We meant to get more at lunch, but all forgot.
-Terrain trap. We wanted to get out of gully and ski slope to left, but there was not enough coverage so we all had to go through gully with only safety zone to right and exit not always possible due to coverage or vegetation.

Some other issues that we did not discuss:
-Group dynamics. While Bobby was leading these tours, I don't know his training for avalanches and admin seemed to think it was safe, but a little sketchy. The rest of us are all adults and were along for the ride. We did find some great snow and nothing happened, but there is some similarity to long NY Times article on Tunnel Creek even though we had smaller group and were skiing much less new snow and terrain.
-While only 4" fell on Saturday, there was avalanche in area when 12" fell on Friday and I'm not sure when or how DeMoissey Bowl slid. I hope it was blasted.
-While we tried to stop partway down gully in safe area, it did not seem very safe. We got out of gully and there was some vegetation around, we were very exposed to large and steep area above us. When Dave arrived and made turns close to our 'safety zone', I thought I saw propagation or sympathetic release a couple of feet away from him closer to us.
-The exit was tough. I think I was the third one down as I did not like where we were and wanted to get out of gully. There was a point where gully narrowed and you had to straight-line, then make a high-speed right, then a sweeping left to dump speed right where some bumps tried to toss you. You would not have wanted to do it with an avalanche chasing you or with a partner or two fleeing one at same time.

Anyway, ignore me or flame me, but I think it's important to always be aware and as Admin said in Forum on Zermatt and off-line, your head is your best piece of avalanche equipment. Even if you have avalanche equipment, if you and partner are both caught, your equipment may get damaged as happened in slide that killed Steve Haas in Jackson Hole in 2003. I think I have a better understanding what admin is trying to tell Tony Crocker. We all want to ski the steep and untracked, but we need to be smart about it so we are doing it until we decide we can't do it any more.

On to the pictures.

tseeb raises some intriguing points, and I apologize to him that I neglected to publicly respond until today, although we had a very productive backchannel exchange prior to his post.

There are two separate safety issues raised in tseeb's post that, frankly, are unrelated to one another: the temptation to ski too far down into Hell's Canyon, and avalanche risk. In fact, the portion of Hell's Canyon that we skied before having to circumnavigate No Name to return to the ski area is far too low a slope angle to present any true avalanche risk. It's blue square terrain at best, perhaps 20-25 degrees and heavily forested. I'm not concerned about avalanche risk there; rather, my primary concern is someone not knowing where they're going and skiing past the point of no return and continuing down to where they may mistakenly presume that it makes more sense to continue down to civilization rather than hike back out. That would be a tremendous error, for some 4,000 vertical feet or so later the line ends in an impassible 600-foot cliff within shouting distance of neighborhoods in Ogden. Your only way out at that point would be to hike all the way back up or get airlifted out of there. And I sure don't want to have to chase someone further down into Hell's Canyon than where I can get out of there myself.

The only place we skied with any propensity to slide was The Hand returning from No Name. While I agree with many of tseeb's observations, there are a couple that I disagree with. Let me comment on those.

Before we dropped into the Fingers, while the crew was taking a break on the ridgeline I knocked off one quick turn on that aspect and really punched down hard to see what would happen as I arced the turn back onto the ridgeline. That was deliberate, for it was in essence a ski cut to see how the slope would react. I was satisfied with the result -- it didn't show any inclination to move whatsoever. Nevertheless, we still practiced safe travel protocols as tseeb has mentioned -- skiing one at a time, and stopping in a zone of safety.

While I completely respect tseeb's concern that this spot was not truly a safe one, I was in fact very comfortable with it. At this spot the gully widens to nearly double its width elsewhere, with a fall line that forms like a V. This little "side gully" terminates immediately uphill of where we were standing and was anchored by some fairly thick brush. Nowhere have we photographed this spot. Even if the entire gully proper were to release, this small enclave would almost assuredly not release above where we were standing, only below. About the only risk this spot presented would be if some other uninvolved party were to ski the slope above us and cause it to release from above the gully. The probability of this was actually quite low. I didn't see any evidence of any kind of sympathetic release or propagation when Dave arrived, and I assure you that I was looking like a hawk.

I also respectfully disagree with the assertion that the slope adjacent to the gully was unskiable. While I believe that there was adequate coverage, I also assert that if one chose to not ski the gully, they could have easily continued safely down the ridge to a route back to the ski area more acceptable to their preferred level of risk. In fact, many in our party continued much further down the ridge in this manner on our second lap through the area -- not for safety concerns, mind you, but simply to find a different route back.

I agree with tseeb that some in our party were skiing without gear left me uncomfortable -- after all, should I get buried I want as many of my companions to have gear as possible -- but as I've said elsewhere this evening I'm not someone's guide. The role that Bobby and I brought to the table was that we knew where we were going -- little more, nothing less. While I may have expressed some observations about safe backcountry travel protocol while we were out there, I did so as a peer and a friend as well as to look out for my own personal safety, not to act as someone's guide. I'm hardly qualified to serve otherwise. I don't pretend to be any sort of avalanche expert. In fact, my knowledge could most definitely be deeper, and should be. What I know is enough to recognize a potential danger and back off from it. I'm actually extremely conservative in that regard, quite probably the most conservative of anyone out there that day. I had carefully reviewed the avalanche forecast that morning and would not have gone out there if it didn't deliver some substantial level of comfort.

There was no one present that day who was unaware that we were leaving the ski area, yet despite ample admonitions on the spot each person chose to proceed. We're all adults, and I expect someone to make their own adult level decisions regarding whether to follow. And I believe that everyone did. If there is anyone who is uncomfortable with that, I have the ultimate respect for that decision and will be happy to arrange a meeting place to reconvene for the next run once we're all safely back at the base.

Thank you, tseeb, for bringing an interesting discussion to the table!

Admin":13gpz2hw said:

tseeb raises some intriguing points, and I apologize to him that I neglected to publicly respond until today, although we had a very productive backchannel exchange prior to his post.

I also respectfully disagree with the assertion that the slope adjacent to the gully was unskiable.

Thank you, tseeb, for bringing an interesting discussion to the table!

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Thank you admin for taking it easy on me. I didn't think I said "that the slope adjacent to the gully was unskiable." I wanted to get to slope adjacent to the gully and I think we did on next one. What I thought was that we could not exit the gully once in it to the left as the left wall did not have enough snow. The Middle Finger of the Hand was the only place I had big concern due to the terrain trap. The step slope at the very beginning of those No Name laps also seemed dangerous due to hard snow until a couple turns in and the knowledge that you were not in ski area anymore.

Admin":13gpz2hw said:

In fact, the portion of Hell's Canyon that we skied before having to circumnavigate No Name to return to the ski area is far too low a slope angle to present any true avalanche risk. It's blue square terrain at best, perhaps 20-25 degrees and heavily forested.

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Those trees held some of the best snow I have ever skied.

FYI there was an in-bounds avalanche at Kirkwood on Thurs. the first day of this storm. http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/1 ... -according I heard Eagle Bowl had been open a half hour before it happened. Even the experts that have to manage risk every day don't always get it 100%.

tseeb":28bsoxf3 said:

I heard Eagle Bowl had been open a half hour before it happened. Even the experts that have to manage risk every day don't always get it 100%.

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Same thing when Heather Gross died at Snowbird in 2008.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_11232264